I sought this debate because incapacity benefit is one of the most important issues in my constituency. The founding idea of IB and its predecessors is sound, in that those who are not able to work through illness or disability, whether of body or mind, should be supported by the state and supported generously. Indeed, we can judge how civilised a society is by the level of support that it provides to the disabled and those who are most vulnerable.

Contrary to ill-informed myth, which is all pervasive, IB is not a scrounger's reward. For the majority of people, IB is a contributory benefit. Apart from those who were incapacitated early in life, many of whom are the most vulnerable in society, all those who receive IB have made national insurance contributions because they have been in work. However, IB is ripe for reform. The figures are startling. When a person has been on IB for a year, he has only a one in five chance of returning to work within five years. Once the person is on IB for a year, he is on average likely to be on it for more than eight years.

Moreover, the longer claimants remain on IB, the more their mental and physical health is likely to deteriorate. Evidence suggests that one in five men who are out of work for more than six months will contract a serious depressive illness. Yet, as the Government's "Pathways to work" White Paper stated, nearly three quarters of new claimants have more manageable medical conditions such as back pain, depression and mild circulatory disorders rather than a severe, acute or degenerative condition such as Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia or severe learning difficulties.

In other words, despite its founding principles, in many communities IB saps the strength of the local economy. It makes many claimants sicker. It keeps people in relative poverty and it hinders their ambition. Nearly every extended family in the Rhondda has someone who is either on or has been on IB. Indeed, with Manchester, Central, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, and Easington, the constituency of Rhondda comes equal second of all the constituencies in the country for the percentage of people of working age on IB, beaten only by Glasgow, Shettleston. For the record, 21 per cent. of people of working age in the Rhondda are on IB, which is more than one in five and three times the national average.

Why did I include coalfield communities in the title of the debate? Well, we have to take only a cursory glance at the list of the top 25 of IB claimant constituencies to know the reason. I am talking about not only Rhondda, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, and Easington, but Aberavon, Blaenau Gwent, Cynon Valley, Ogmore, Caerphilly, Neath and Barnsley—a roll call of coalfield communities. Indeed, when we add that other great British industry of yore—shipbuilding—we have a virtual map of the British IB world, with six Glasgow and five Merseyside constituencies completing the list. Of course, that is no coincidence. The decline of the mining and shipbuilding industries—or their systematic dismantling by successive Tory Governments—saw vast numbers of former miners and shipbuilders consigned to the statistics. As it suited the Government of the day, who ironically were elected on the campaign slogan "Labour isn't working", to pretend that they were strong on the economy, many thousands of those former miners and shipbuilders, and subsequently their sons and daughters, were massaged off the unemployment statistics and on to the invalidity list—off the dole and on to the sick.

The Government, who have done so much to tackle the scourge of unemployment, with 2 million extra jobs and an historically low work-force-based unemployment figure of only 2.5 per cent. in the Rhondda, have a major task ahead of them, which is to tackle poverty and social inequality in a constituency such as mine by reforming IB and giving everyone a real chance in life.

Certainly, numbers have fallen; in every ward in my constituency bar one—Cymmer—the number of IB claimants in 2002 was lower than in 1998. The fall has been largest in Treherbert, one of the most geographically isolated and most beautiful wards in the constituency, where the number of claimants is down from 915 to 780. That fall came before the introduction of the pathways to work pilot scheme in my area.

However, that still lands us with a situation in which one in five people of working age is on IB. I believe that that is not primarily down to fraud. In fact, every systematic analysis of IB—as opposed to the various anecdotal back-of-a-postcard analyses that have been undertaken—shows that there is a remarkably low rate of fraud. It is less than 1 per cent; it is something like 0.5 per cent. To all intents and purposes, it is virtually and statistically irrelevant.

The real challenge is that although 40 per cent. of new claimants do not think that their health is a major obstacle to returning to work, and 90 per cent. of claimants expect to get back to work swiftly, many get caught in a vicious circle of dwindling skills, poorer health and greater isolation from the job market. It must be for a socialist Labour Government to tackle that, because the only point of a Labour Government is to tackle poverty and its root causes. Of course, in large measure, the Government are tackling the problem through the pathways to work pilot, which was launched in September 2003, first in three and then in seven Jobcentre Plus districts.

I know from my own experience that the pathways to work pilot that covers the Rhondda is having a significant effect. It is being coupled with the Jobcentre Plus roll-out, which, by bringing together the two arms of the Department for Work and Pensions, has managed to achieve a much better, client-focused approach to the needs of people presenting themselves for jobseeker's allowance or IB. That has led to a significant increase in the number of people moving off benefits and into work, which is welcome.

At first, some criticised the mandatory job-focused interviews, arguing that their mandatory nature would undermine their effectiveness. However, the fact that those interviews have been better resourced than they were previously, the new back-up rehabilitation services and the much improved collaboration with the new deal for disabled people job-brokers have meant that claimants have seen the value of sticking with trying to get back into work, despite the many complex obstacles that there may be. Those obstacles might relate to finding a job that is local, or to their health.

Equally important has been the return to work credit of £40 per week, which has effectively overcome the traditional fear that many claimants have felt about the insecurity of work income as opposed to the security of benefits income. The results are quite impressive. In the seven pilot areas, almost twice as many claimants were helped into a job this August as were last August. More than one in 10 claimants have joined the new deal for disabled people in those pilot areas. That is more than double the national average.

I warmly welcome the announcement made last week that the Government intend to roll out the pathways to work pilot across another 14 Jobcentre Plus districts next October. Many of the other measures announced by the Chancellor last week are a step in the right direction, too. For instance, it makes sense that the permitted work rules are to change. They allowed claimants to work part-time for only up to 26 weeks, but that will now be extended to 52 weeks. There is to be a yet more generous arrangement for those with advanced or progressive health conditions. It must be good news that we are allowing people to build up their working hours over a period, allowing them to build on what they can do rather than always focusing on what they cannot do, and guaranteeing their income over a substantial period.

However, there are additional issues that we need to address. First, there are mental health issues. It is a hideous cliché—but what politician can avoid a cliché?—to describe mental health services as the Cinderella of all health services. The largest group of IB claimants in the land comprises those who suffer from mental and behavioural disorders. The latest figures suggest that there are 908,400 such claimants. Unless we significantly invest in mental health provision, we do not stand a chance of helping nearly 1 million IB claimants into work that might help their mental health. The term "mental and behavioural disorders" covers a wide range of problems, from stress to eating disorders and substance abuse, but we have to engender a sustained and deliberate assault on the wide range of mental health issues if we are to achieve success.

It is worrying that too many general practitioners are still over-prescribing anti-depressants, such as the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors like Prozac. There were 19 million such prescriptions in England last year and we know from research undertaken for the Welsh Assembly Government that Welsh GPs prescribe on average 19 per cent. more drugs per patient than their English counterparts. So, it is a pretty good guess that there are more people on IB who are on anti-depressants unnecessarily in the Rhondda even than in England.

For patients with mild to moderate depression, including many patients on IB, counselling would be far more effective and less addictive than anti-depressant drugs and more likely to enable people to come back into work. However, psychiatric services everywhere in the country remain under-resourced and counselling is almost non-existent in many less affluent communities.

Similarly, it will always be difficult to help someone with a substance abuse problem back into work, because they have some of the most difficult problems. However, a special pilot project in the Rhondda is trying to do precisely that and it is bearing some fruit. In large measure that is thanks to the dramatic increase in drug treatment services in the in the past year in Rhondda: an extra £1 million has been pumped in because only two years ago we had a two-year waiting list. Of course, for any young person with a substance abuse problem, who is often leading a chaotic lifestyle, having to wait two years is not an option. We saw the depressing sight of young people deliberately trying to get arrested to get into prison, because they knew that there were better drug treatments there than they would find in their local community.

I am glad to say that through the extra money—and through the opening of a new service in Llwynypia earlier this year—we now have a far more effective drug treatment service and young people are able to move into treatment. We are talking not only about a one-off counselling session, but a serious attempt to give people an opportunity to turn their lives around. However, there is still a long way to go in helping people with alcohol and drug problems back into the mainstream. Poor mental health, poor self-worth and being out of work can all too easily be a vicious circle of depression and government has a vital role in breaking that cycle.

The second largest group of IB claimants is people with musculoskeletal problems. Again, we have to invest further—and do so intelligently—if we are to tackle economic incapacity in an area such as the one that I represent. I know dozens of constituents who are ill and anxious to work, but have waited too long for operations and descended into depression and anxiety, so that the illness that they first presented with, which drove them onto incapacity benefit, has become the secondary problem in their life and their main problem is their mental health. We owe these people a health service of which they can be proud.

It is particularly depressing that two police officers in my constituency who took part in a raid on a house three years ago, during which they both fell rather badly, have had severe back problems ever since and have not been able to return to work because they do not have the health support and surgery that they need. Unless we are able to turn around waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery in south Wales, we do not stand a chance of getting many such people back to work. Of course it is good news that waiting lists for orthopaedic surgery are falling in England, but unless we can match that trend in Wales we will never get the large numbers of valleys claimants back into work, and we will have failed in our moral duty.

We need to bring forward the moment at which the first job-focused interview is held. At present, many people pass through their 20 weeks of statutory sick pay without any clear discussion of how they could manage their illness to ensure that they do not end up permanently excluded from the job market. We need to change that situation. The Government are right to argue that GPs should play a key role in supporting the recovery and rehabilitation of patients and, when appropriate, encouraging them to return to work. I hope that the Minister will be able to say a little more about how the Chancellor's announcement last week of help in GPs' clinics will work with the devolved parts of the United Kingdom. What discussions have been held between the Welsh Assembly Government and my hon. Friend's Department to try to make that a possibility in Wales and Scotland as well as in England?

I shall raise an issue that pertains directly to the Department for Work and Pensions, although I suppose that it is not directly relevant to IB. I am talking about the Department's own staffing. In the Rhondda we have two splendidly and elegantly refurbished Ikea-like Jobcentre Plus offices in Tonypandy and Treorchy. A brand new one is being built in Hannah street in Porth, and so swiftly that it looks as though it might even be open by Christmas.

The new office environment, which takes away screens for the vast majority of clients, has been dramatically helpful in changing people's attitude towards work; it has helped get more IB claimants off benefits and into work. However, the Department plans to take nearly 85 processing jobs out of the Rhondda and send them to Caerphilly or Merthyr Tydfil; it wants to create larger processing units so that the back offices are concentrated into units of more than 100. I understand that Ministers might think it a little churlish of me to mention that. After all, Merthyr Tydfil and Caerphilly are not far from the Rhondda and they are deprived valleys communities that suffer many of precisely the same problems as the Rhondda. However, it seems something of an own goal to deprive the Rhondda of 85 good Government jobs—some of the very few national Government jobs there—and I urge the Government to rethink any plans to take DWP jobs out of any of the 25 constituencies with the most claims for IB.

There is a phenomenal misconception that those of us calling for a reform of IB do so out of an old-fashioned campaign against malingerers. That is not my argument at all—far from it. I happen to believe those million or so claimants, my constituents among them, who say that they want to get back into work. It is the job of the Labour Government to remove every obstacle that prevents people with illness or disability from finding and enjoying a satisfying job with a decent living wage. In my experience, people are not looking for handouts; they want a chance to work, to provide for themselves and their families and to retire in dignity. They also want support when they need it, and they look to this Government to provide it.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing this debate on an important and major issue. The problem of incapacity benefit claimants is general across the country although, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, it is particularly focused in certain areas. If one maps the claimant numbers for incapacity benefit, one gets a clear picture of the traditional industrial areas of Britain that suffered wholesale job losses when entire industries were closed down in a very short space of time.

As has been said, the general problem of IB is that the number of people claiming it has increased in a quarter of a century from about 700,000 to about 2.7 million. Some two thirds of those who are claiming have been doing so for more than five years. Therefore, the average IB claimant is now long-term unemployed. We heard that where someone is claiming IB for one year, on average they will be unemployed for about eight years, and where they are claiming it for two years they are more likely to die or retire than to find work again. There is a major problem across the country, which is particularly concentrated in certain deprived and formerly industrial areas. They are the heavy and traditional industrial areas; we could be talking about steel in Sheffield, where I grew up, shipbuilding, to which the hon. Member for Rhondda referred, or engineering.

It is especially noticeable that the top of the roll-call of IB claimant areas includes most of the former coalfield areas. Parts of my Chesterfield constituency fall in the north Derbyshire coalfield and suffer from the problem, particularly the Staveley end of the constituency. Across the country there are the examples of Easington in County Durham, Sedgefield—the Prime Minister's constituency, where one in 10 men of working age are claiming IB—or even worse, as the hon. Member for Rhondda mentioned, the problem in the Rhondda, where 21 per cent. of people are claiming it.

The general problem of IB is a national one, which is particularly concentrated in certain areas. In considering it, we need to tie it in with the question of hidden unemployment. One quarter of men aged 50 to 64 across the country are economically inactive: they are neither employed nor recorded as unemployed. The hidden unemployed are concentrated in the areas of highest unemployment, be it the inner-city areas or coalfield areas. The Government tell us that there are far more in employment than ever before, which, by the way the figures are measured, is true, but there are also more in hidden unemployment than ever before. It is an issue that we need to tackle.

What is the cause of the increase in hidden unemployment and the increase in the number of people who are claiming IB? That has been ably dealt with by the hon. Member for Rhondda. The main cause that many—such as the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and, often, the Conservative party—cite is that it is all to do with scroungers, malingerers and fraudsters.

The hon. Gentleman has just said that the Conservative party claims that IB claimants are fraudsters—or he used words to that effect. Does he have a quote to back that up?

I do not have any quotes with me, but I can certainly dig some up and send them to the hon. Gentleman.

Regrettably, in recent months even the Prime Minister has made what might be interpreted by many as pre-election noises—to satisfy certain parts of the press—about cutting entitlement to IB, in order to change the mindset of claimants. That seems partly to be predicated on an idea that many of the people who are claiming are doing so falsely or unjustly.

Does the hon. Gentleman have a quote to back up that sentence?

I have indeed, although I am unsure whether you will give me time to leaf through all my notes to find it, Mr. Deputy Speaker. However, I will certainly find it and show it to the hon. Gentleman at the end of this debate, or, when I have dug it out of the pile of quotations, I will intervene later in the debate to make the point.

We hear a lot of noise from all sorts of quarters about the fact that this major problem is down—in one sense—to whether some people are malingers. As we have heard, that is nonsense. Yesterday, in his statement on the uprating of welfare benefits and other changes in welfare reform, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pointed out to the House that this country has the most stringent gateway into IB, as measured by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Professor Steve Fothergill and Christina Beatty, of Sheffield Hallam university, who head up a renowned research unit that looks into economic and social matters in areas of deprivation, pointed out in one of their reports that it is nonsense to suggest that people can just get a "sickie" from the doctor, be on IB for the rest of their lives and live a life of luxury—the level of IB would not allow anybody to do that. As Professor Fothergill points out, that could no longer be true—if it ever was—because after six months everybody who signs on for IB has to undergo stringent medical checks. They are not carried out by the family GP, who allegedly might just sign people off on the sick for all sorts of reasons. They are formal medical assessments made by doctors working for the Benefits Agency.

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the Benefits Agency was abolished some time ago and that its functions are carried out by Jobcentre Plus or the disability and carers service?

I am sure that the millions of people who are hanging on every word of this debate and who will read it avidly are interested in the minutiae of the correct names of the departments. The doctors were initially employed by the Benefits Agency, which has since undergone various name changes and mergers.

The checks are so stringent that the number of successful appeals has risen over the past four years. I have frequently raised that point in questions, letters to the Minister and debates such as this, and I received the most recent written answer from the Minister yesterday. In that answer, the chart of successful claims against denial of incapacity benefit shows that since 2001, when about a third of appeals against denial of benefits were successful, the number has risen steadily to just under a half. People who suggest that the large number of people on IB is down to malingering and a sick-note culture are wide of the mark. It is not that easy to remain on incapacity benefit for any length of time because of those checks. To say that scroungers are the problem is a facile analysis.

The IB claimant rate is rising as the nation's health is improving in general. The nation's health is not improving uniformly across all groups and social classes—disadvantaged groups have experienced a smaller improvement—but in general, it is improving in all groups, yet the number of people claiming sickness benefit is increasing. What are the causes of that?

As the hon. Member for Rhondda has already mentioned, one cause is economic circumstances. Twenty-five years ago, we began a process of mass closures of particular traditional industries, such as shipbuilding, engineering, steelworks and, in this case, coalfields. Twenty-five years later, if one maps IB claimants across the country, the comparisons are stark. In the south-east, where 86 per cent. of men of working age are employed, the number claiming IB is the lowest in the UK. In areas of the country where employment was based on traditional industries, such as the coalfields, there are the highest numbers of IB claims.

There is a clear link between the traditional industries that were shut down virtually overnight and the number of people claiming IB. However, it is interesting to note historically that although coal mining was a dangerous occupation, the number of people claiming sickness benefit in coalfield areas was not especially high before the pits were closed. The surge in IB claimants came after the pits were closed, rather than when they were working at full tilt. We need to delve deeper into why there has been an increase in IB claimants.

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, incapacity benefit was initially a way of massaging unemployment figures in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was much simpler to sign large numbers of people up for IB than to see unemployment figures soaring to even greater heights than they had already reached. That led to a vicious circle of expectations and lack of opportunity. Professor Fothergill has pointed out that about 1.2 million of the 2.7 million adults claiming sickness-related benefits are hidden unemployed, in the sense that they could reasonably be expected to be in work in a genuinely fully employed economy. According to Professor Fothergill, the problem is that some people have given up looking for work because they think that they are incapable of getting jobs or that jobs do not exist in their area.

That view is reflected in research carried out by the Unemployed Workers' Centre in Chesterfield. Volunteer workers went to Staveley, in the north of my constituency, which was a traditional coal mining area. They spoke to people going to Jobcentre Plus and claiming IB, and undertook a careful statistical analysis of the reasons people gave for being unemployed and why they thought they would remain unemployed. The most frequent reason given—in 76 per cent. of cases—was that there were not jobs around to apply for. An almost equally large number said that they did not believe that they were qualified for existing jobs. As long as the emphasis of Jobcentre Plus—which has dramatically improved in its new guise, as the hon. Gentleman said—continues to be on the motivation and job-readiness of the individual claimant, we will be ignoring the reality that the jobs have to exist. In places such as the Rhondda, County Durham or Staveley in the north of my constituency, many of those jobs simply are not there.

There are the jobs in the Rhondda. One problem is that anyone who has been economically inactive, to use the inelegant phrase, for a considerable time does not know what is going on in the job market. Their perceptions may be wide of the mark. The process needs to change; it must ensure that people have an opportunity to understand what is available out there.

The hon. Gentleman is right that the job market is changing dramatically. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, unemployment in Chesterfield was well above the national average and although it is still above the national average it has come down significantly. There are many more job opportunities, including, I am pleased to say, in the new IT industries that have been attracted into the area. Nevertheless, as one former Minister who now chairs a Select Committee recently pointed out, many of the jobs that have been created across the country are relatively low paid and low skilled.

When a 59-year-old miner, who worked in a dangerous but well paid industry, looks at some of the low-paid alternative jobs that are available—or, as the general myth has it, are all that is available—he may be put off seeking a job. There is a psychological barrier as well as the reality that in many of the former heavy industrial areas the job market is by no means as buoyant, well paid or attractive as it is in the overheating economy of the southern part of the country.

We must ask the Minister to consider—in the context of the whole Government strategy, not simply from the perspective of the Department for Work and Pensions—trying to move jobs from the south to the north. We hear today that the BBC plans to move a large number of jobs to Manchester. The strategy of moving jobs from the south to the north where possible makes sense both to the taxpayer, because the costs are lower in the north, and to the areas of high unemployment in the north.

Other areas of Government strategy need to be examined, such as the over-concentration of university research funding in science and engineering in the golden silicon triangle around London, Oxford and Cambridge, which is to the detriment of northern or Welsh universities. Such a strategy is very short-sighted. If all the money is put into a few centres of excellence, it undermines the economies of other parts of the UK. Just this last week the Government talked about creating science cities such as York, which is my old university town. That is a welcome step. We need to help the economy of areas of England outside London and the south-east. We need to alter the mindset and the job availability in those areas.

What are the other solutions, apart from general Government policy on economic development? The hon. Member for Rhondda has already touched on a number of those. The Government are now talking about putting advisers into GPs' surgeries to get around that old notion that GPs sign people off automatically. That is not a new idea. An organisation called Tomorrow's People—a private company that works in this area—has been doing that successfully for some years. That may be the inspiration for the experiment that the Government are going to undertake.

Tomorrow's People produces statistical documentation to show how effective it is to put advisers into a GP's surgery to give assistance straight away. At least half a million of the people who claim incapacity benefit are not claiming the higher rate, which suggests that at least 20 per cent. on incapacity benefit are not barred from work in the sense of total physical incapacity by any stretch of the imagination. They are capable of degrees of work, although they may not be able to go back to the sort of job that they used to have.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that many people who get the higher rates of disability living allowance do full-time work and are perfectly capable of doing it?

Absolutely. One good example lives just two streets away from me in Chesterfield. She is a young lady who has been in a wheelchair since birth and yet works full-time. However, on top of that particular incapacity she now has recurrent multiple sclerosis, which makes things even worse. However, she still works, but without the support that she gets from the Government, such as mobility allowances, she could not do so. Even the most disabled people can often work, if they are given the assistance to overcome particular obstacles.

One step forward would be to give more advice to people at the point at which they become unemployed, whether the cause is stress, mental health, depression or back pain, because the earlier the intervention, the more successful it is.

One of the problems is the structure of incapacity benefit. That point was made in great detail in the report that was published yesterday by the Institute for Public Policy Research. Another problem with incapacity benefit is that claimants must demonstrate that they are incapable of work in order to get the benefit. Not only does that encourage the wrong mindset, but once people have obtained the benefit by demonstrating that they are incapable of work, they then risk losing it should they try to return to work. Many people who are trying to claim incapacity benefit fear that if they try to get back into work and find that they cannot manage it or cannot manage full-time work, they will then have to go through all those obstacles and hurdles again. As the Secretary of State said yesterday, those barriers are the most stringent in the OECD lexicon in relation to claiming incapacity benefit.

The hon. Gentleman is forgetting the linking rules which, although they are not as well known as we might like, enable people to try out work for up to two years in some circumstances and then to go back on to incapacity benefit at the point at which they left it, if they cannot manage the job, without having to re-qualify.

As the Minister rightly points out and the hon. Member for Rhondda mentioned, steps have recently been taken to improve the situation. The return-to-work benefit, mentioned by the hon. Member for Rhondda in connection with pathways to work, has been very successful. The personal advisers in Chesterfield, which was one of the early pilots for pathways to work, are full of praise for it, because it overcomes the problem that I was outlining before the Minister's intervention: that people fear going back to work and losing their hard-won benefits if they cannot manage the work or can only manage it part-time.

The situation is improving, and the return-to-work benefit is good, but it lasts for only 12 months. Given that the initial pathways to work experiments are still less than 12 months old, we cannot fully measure the effect of what will happen in the second and third years to people who have been able to go back to work because of the return-to-work benefit but might not be able to continue in full-time work without that benefit.

The Liberal Democrats have long advocated that there should be more research in that area and that the idea of a partial benefit should be examined. Some people on incapacity benefit—some disabled people—could never work full-time but could work part-time, if they were sure that a partial benefit was available. A partial benefit would mean that they could work and pay taxes for part of the week, and would be entitled to that partial benefit as well. In addition to the personal benefit to individuals, that would be a win-win situation for the taxpayer, because every extra day that someone works rather than being on benefit the taxpayer is not only not paying the benefits but is getting the tax back.

The measures that are being adopted in that area should be expanded. In general, there has been early success in the infancy of the pathways to work pilots; it is therefore welcome news that they are being expanded to a third of the country—mostly to the hardest hit areas, such as the coalfield areas. I hope that the Government will continue in that direction in the future and that they will not—as the Prime Minister seems to have been doing on and off over the past few months—pursue the tabloid newspaper headline agenda of cracking down on benefit abusers and benefit scroungers and of time-limiting the entitlement to benefits.

Finally, Kate Stanley from the Institute for Public Policy Research, who played the largest part in producing its report, said yesterday:

"The idea of reducing the number of claimants or time limiting the benefit in order simply to make public spending savings is not an acceptable motive for reform."

If the intention of getting people off incapacity benefit is to save money for the taxpayer and perhaps to put it into other things such as pensions, that in itself is not an acceptable motive for reform—[Interruption.] The Minister appears exasperated. However, the IPPR is the Labour party's favourite think-tank and is influential on the Labour party's thinking. Kate Stanley continued:

"Such an approach could lead to entrenched poverty"

for people who lose out. Some of the reforms that are being introduced are welcome and I have given lots of support to them. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that in general, as all the statistics show, the 2.7 million people claiming IB are not malingerers or scroungers. At least half of them would be capable of getting back to work quickly if they had appropriate support and if jobs existed in the areas of the country where they tend to live.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing the debate. He represented his constituents very effectively in what he said, and we all know that he is a brave and energetic parliamentarian. Of course, he came close to losing his opportunity to represent Rhondda for ever in 1997, when he stood as the Labour candidate in the constituency that I represent. He is still remembered in High Wycombe as a former curate at All Saints, where he was before he moved on, as I have, to higher things. I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should of course say "lower things", because the Church, as we all know, is a more exalted institution than Parliament. [Interruption.] I should perhaps not be drawn into these matters more deeply.

The hon. Gentleman made a very good speech. He was right to draw attention to the serious rise in the number of mental health claimants. There has been a 53 per cent. increase in that group since 1997, and such people now account for 38 per cent. of the total. The serious problem with people coming on to incapacity benefit, which the Government now have to deal with, is those coming on to it for mental health reasons. Although the Government are relatively successful at stopping other types of claimant coming on to IB, they are not successful at all, as far as I can see, at stopping those coming on to it for mental health reasons—but more of that later.

What I particularly appreciated about the hon. Gentleman's speech was that it gave the IB nerds among us, of whom the Minister and I must count as two, a chance to concentrate on what IB nerds sometimes describe as the problem of the stock—that is, those who have been on IB for a long time. That is a rather dry way of putting it. As the hon. Gentleman reminded us, it would be more accurate to talk about the problems faced by those described as the stock, many of whom have been stuck on IB for a long time and are thereby losing the opportunity to fulfil their talent and potential. His constituents are still losing that opportunity in regrettably large numbers.

As the Institute for Public Policy Research pointed out recently in its reform proposals—I think that I am the third person to cite the IPPR—once people have been claiming IB for a year, the average duration of their claim is eight years. The hon. Gentleman alluded to this. Once people have been claiming for two years, they are more likely to die or retire than to leave the benefit for a job.

Everyone is mentioning the IPPR, but will the hon. Gentleman accept that it has taken those figures straight out of the "Pathways to work: Helping people into employment" Green Paper and that they are Government figures? That should not be a matter of controversy.

The Minister is correct, and it is reasonable to repeat the figures often, as they go near the core of the problem. While we are on the subject of the IPPR, with which the Minister appears to have shown a little impatience, I shall take the opportunity to ask her a question. The IPPR has produced a series of interesting ideas, which Opposition Members will want to consider. However, I am not as well linked into the world of left-leaning think-tanks as I might be. Have the Government ruled out incorporating the IPPR proposals into their own policies?

I will return to the subject of the stock. However, as this is the first opportunity that the official Opposition have had since the pre-Budget report to do so, I shall comment on the Government's announcements on IB. We welcome the extension of pathways to work to one third of the country. We also welcome the extra £30 million for the new deal for disabled people—I will comment on that later—and the plans to place employment advisers in doctors' surgeries. Like the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes), I am curious about that proposal; perhaps the Minister will tell us how many advisers she expects to be in place and by when, what the cost will be, and how many people the Government believe the advisers will get into work and keep in work.

I want to address the problems faced by the people, such as the constituents of the hon. Member for Rhondda, who are the stock of IB. Under this Government, fewer people are going on to IB but fewer people are getting off it. That is the core of the problem that Ministers and other politicians have to face. The number of claimants who receive IB pure and simple—the so-called beneficiaries—has declined from about three quarters in 1997 to about two thirds at present. The remaining third of claimants mostly receive means-tested income support with a disability premium. That is why the claimant figure has risen slightly since the Government came to power, from 2.3 million in 1997 to 2.4 million this year. Indeed, between 1999 and 2003—I shall comment on the significance of 1999 in a moment—the average quarterly figures for terminations fell from 136,000 to 113,000, cancelling out the positive effect of the rise in commencements. The figures for IB terminations for the first half of the current year show a further decline.

Why has that happened? In 1999, the Government decided to means-test IB. The consequences were exactly as we predicted at the time. People who came off IB faced the prospect of returning to it at a lower rate, as they do now. As the Minister said in an intervention on the hon. Member for Chesterfield, there is the return-to-work credit of £40 a week. However, it is little understood; indeed, the Minister said that it is not as well known as it might be.

I was talking about the linking rules, not the return-to-work credit.

I am grateful for that correction, but I still think it is true to say that, like the linking rules, the return-to-work credit is not as well known as it might be.

That is part of the problem that the tax and benefit system has become much more complicated under this Government. Benefits were never easy for claimants to access at the best of times, but that is even more so now as the Chancellor's bewildering maze of credits—he remains the real power and architect of policy of the Department for Work and Pensions—is extremely complicated.

I am slightly confused—or maybe the hon. Gentleman is confused and is therefore confusing me. He seems to be arguing that there are people who make a judgment about whether to go into work or remain on benefits on the basis of whether they will be financially better off, and yet at the same time he is saying that the Government have made the system so complicated and difficult to understand that no sane and sensible person would be able to figure out whether they would be better off. Surely those two points are incompatible?

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is confused and he is confusing me and therefore I am confusing him, but I think that both of those critiques are true. Like most of the rest of us, many claimants try to work out what will or will not make them better off. They have some difficulty trying to assess what will make them better off as they negotiate their way through the current system.

Pathways to work has had some encouraging early results, although figures are scarce, and we do not know if it will prove as effective at keeping people in work as it has apparently been at getting them into work, as it has not been around long enough for us to tell. It can also be argued that pathways is getting back into work the people who are easiest to get into work—part of the flow—rather than those who are hardest to get into work—the stock. We know that pathways is due to start on the stock soon, because the Secretary of State said so in a recent oral questions, but we will see.

The hon. Gentleman is overlooking the fact that although it is people coming on to IB in the pathways areas who have the mandatory participation, those who have been on benefit for a longer period of time can and do volunteer.

They can and do volunteer, but we have not yet seen from the figures proof that substantial numbers of people who are on the stock are returning to work through pathways. I do not think that there have been any figures relating to that, and I will return to the matter later.

We welcome the fact that pathways is soon due to start on the stock. However, pathways alone will not get and keep enough people off the stock and get them into work quickly, because the stock is simply too big. However, there are ways of getting people off the stock and into work more quickly, and bringing people such as the constituents of the hon. Member for Rhondda into work and fulfilling their potential, and my colleagues and I have been looking at those ways very closely. Although I am too junior in the food chain to make any announcements this morning—announcements tend to be made by people who are more senior than I am; perhaps the Minister knows what that experience is like—I want, as ever, to be positive and to offer some ideas for reform.

The most effective part of the Government's programme, both for the flow and the stock, is not pathways but the new deal for disabled people. As the Minister knows, we do not support the other new deals. However, we think that the NDDP is on the right lines because it is aimed at the people who are least likely to find and keep work without it. The NDDP is not without its faults and problems, which I will mention later, but it is the most effective part of the Government's programme.

One of the anecdotal findings of the pilot scheme in the Rhondda, which can be seen in the available figures for the past year, is that through pathways, double the national average of people are going on to the NDDP.

Yes, that is correct. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has given an accurate figure. As I said, we do not have figures for pathways that tell us how long the people who go into work stay in work. As he knows, that is a very big problem for disabled people once they enter the labour market.

Yes, but the hon. Gentleman is saying that he supports the NDDP but does not think that pathways to work is necessarily the right way forward.

I did not say that pathways to work was the wrong way forward. I said that the NDDP was the most effective part of the Government's programme, although it is not without its faults and problems, which, as I said, I will come to later.

The key element of the NDDP, which the hon. Gentleman touched on in his intervention, is the participation of the voluntary sector. I pay tribute to the work of organisations such as the Shaw Trust, whose advisers have the proven expertise and commitment to re-energise people who have often been absent from the labour market for a long time. For example, the Shaw Trust's success rates to date are higher than Jobcentre Plus success rates per se. As usual, the voluntary sector is proving more effective at re-energising and motivating people than the state. The hon. Gentleman offered some anecdotal experience and I will do so, too. From talking to organisations such as the Shaw Trust, I have learned that they believe that if they can get in quickly, as it were, for people with mental health problems, they are relatively likely to be able to get them back into the labour market and keep them there.

Indeed. Where the voluntary sector can play a particularly important role—we have heard this anecdotally—is in trying to help people with substance abuse problems. The combined work of the public sector and the voluntary sector can make a dramatic difference because people have so many different routes into addiction that a variety of routes out of addiction must be provided. The voluntary sector, with its web of connections, can often be far more effective than the public sector.

The hon. Gentleman is right about that, and that touches on a point with which he is unlikely to agree. The role of the state, by and large, is to plan and administer the system, but the voluntary sector is very often a more effective provider than the state.

I would not want to denigrate the positive impact of the voluntary sector, particularly in respect of the NDDP, but I presume that the hon. Gentleman is aware that one of our best and most effective NDDP providers is Jobcentre Plus.

The figures that I have seen suggest that the voluntary providers are more effective than Jobcentre Plus. Perhaps we shall be able to exchange figures on that. However, nobody here doubts the beneficial role of the voluntary sector.

I am listening with interest to the hon. Gentleman, but before he moves on, could he elaborate on why he thinks that the voluntary sector does better? It strikes me, having visited several Shaw Trust projects over the past two or three years, that one of the differences is that it takes a much longer-term view. The hon. Gentleman talked about early intervention with people with mental health problems, for example, but I have seen Shaw Trust projects where a lot of long-term work, for perhaps a year, is done before even trying to get people back into employment. Those are people who have been disabled and unemployed for a long time.

Phoenix, a private company with charitable funding that started in Rotherham and now does a lot of work in Chesterfield with drug abusers, delivers Progress2work, which the Government introduced. However, before that, Phoenix helped people with long-term drug problems back into work, because it could use private charitable funding as well. They were longer-term projects, not the short-term tick-box targets of the NDDP.

I respect what the hon. Gentleman says, and I am sure that he is right. The answer to the question that he asked me is: I do not know. I do not think that anyone has an authoritative answer as to why the voluntary sector is much more effective at close work with people than the state. The answer usually given is that the voluntary sector is closer and more motivated. I suspect that that is right, but I do not know for sure.

We think that real substantial reform is likely to have the following characteristics. First, it will spend to save. We believe that there is more capacity to spend and save than the Government appear to believe. According to the figure that I have seen, the UK spends only one fifth of the EU average on employment programmes for disabled people. Earlier this year, Ian Charlesworth, the managing director of the Shaw Trust, complained on regional television—the hon. Member for Chesterfield referred to this in an earlier debate—that the trust had been asked by Jobcentre Plus to slow down its activities, because finances were being capped. In other words, the paradox was—

Finances have never been capped. At that time, the Shaw Trust was running ahead of the total amount of money that it was contracted to provide. That is not finances being capped. What happened is that we discussed with the trust how best to deal with that and, as a result, it is continuing to do the job and there is more money available. That is not my definition of capping, and nor should it be the hon. Gentleman's.

It was not my definition, it was Ian Charlesworth's, as I reported. While the Minister is right to say that the problem that she has described and about which Ian Charlesworth has complained has now been at least temporarily solved, voluntary organisations have contacted me to complain that they cannot work as effectively as they would like, because a point is reached where they are no longer rewarded for being successful because the budget is too tight.

Mr. Charlesworth warned that five Shaw Trust offices, including one in the Prime Minister's Sedgefield constituency, were threatened with closure. We gather that, as the Minister says, the problem has been solved, but we wait to see whether it will recur. As long as the new deal for disabled people continues to be comparatively under-resourced, at least compared with other European countries, as long as finances are riddled with the problems that I have just described, as long as contracts remain relatively brief and as long as voluntary providers complain of Jobcentre Plus red tape, I suspect that such problems are likely to recur.

Secondly, real reform would provide more help with rehabilitation. Pathways is starting to do that but, as I argued earlier, it is aimed largely at the flow and not at the stock. It is not clear that the NHS has the capacity to provide rehabilitation on a large enough scale to help the stock substantially.

Thirdly, real reform would also tackle those aspects of the benefit and credit system that are most likely to discourage people from leaving IB. The Minister and I had an exchange earlier about the linking rule, but as everyone acknowledges, many of the people who are currently described as the stock fear that if they left IB, they would return to it at a lower rate.

Fourthly, real reform would cut through some of the red tape that I described earlier and about which some providers have complained. Some contractors have complained that up to 20 per cent. of staff time is spent providing proof to Jobcentre Plus that clients have started employment and stopped claiming benefit, which apparently, Jobcentre Plus should know from its own records.

In short, we hope to build on some of the projects that the Government now have in place. We believe that they have been a little slow in getting round to pathways, although they are now rolling it out, and that some of the processes involved in pathways and the new deal are somewhat bureaucratic. We are not convinced that there is fully joined-up government between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury to ensure that enough funds are invested in the Government's present programmes to make an impact on the stock.

The hon. Member for Rhondda has done a great service by giving us a chance to explore the significant and lasting problem at the centre of the IB dispute: the challenges and difficulties faced by those people who are often described as the stock, who are not receiving as much opportunity as they wish.

I start by saying how much I have enjoyed this high-quality debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on initiating it and presenting his arguments, which were replete with the experience of his constituency as one would expect, in such a coherent and passionate way.

That passion is something that anyone who examines the issue comes to feel. We are talking about opportunities for our fellow citizens, and there can be nothing more important to a Labour Government than to ensure that everybody in our communities has the opportunity to develop to their full potential and to live their lives in a way that is satisfying to them, productive to our economy and good for our society. That is really what we are here to talk about.

I suppose that I will just about put up with being called an IB nerd by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman). I acknowledge that we have some interest in examining the differences between us on the issue of IB but I find "nerd" a little hard to take so early in the morning. All political parties are interested in this issue; the debate has demonstrated that all parties are engaged with it, and that is a good thing.

The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) has gotten out of bed on the wrong side, as usual. I have accused him of that before, but the situation was worse than usual today because he forgot his quotes. That suggests that he got out of bed at the very last minute and dashed here, leaving his no doubt carefully prepared quotes behind. I expect him to write to me with full details of the quotes that he could not find when he was challenged.

The hon. Gentleman's speech was somewhat curmudgeonly. Although he did not want to, he grudgingly admitted that he agrees with a great deal of what the Government are doing. Buried somewhere in the depths of his speech, he sort of said that he approved of pathways to work. He performed a form of shadow boxing; he set up an argument that nobody was advancing, and then knocked it down. That was interesting to watch, but I am not sure how relevant it was to the detail of the debate. None the less, buried in his speech somewhere was a rather grudging acceptance of what the Government are doing. It is a shame that he could not bring himself to say, "Bravo! Well done. We support you." But then again he is not that sort of Opposition spokesman. However, I enjoyed his remarks, and look forward to the letters that I am almost certain to get as a result of treating him in such a way this morning.

The hon. Member for Wycombe made an interesting speech, as he always does. I shall take issue with some of what he said before I deal with the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, which I wish to go through in some detail. I caution the hon. Member for Wycombe against dealing with the issue using concepts such as "flow" and "stock". First, the terms are somewhat offensive because we are talking about people. However, I know that he did not intend to be offensive; he is using a shorthand—as nerds often do—for something that it would take many sentences to express. We would have run out of time by now if he had not used that shorthand.

Secondly, when using that kind of technical shorthand, and talking about flow on to the benefit, and the stock of people stuck on benefit, it is easy to think of such matters as static, and they are not. There are many people circulating around the system and coming on to the benefit who the hon. Gentleman would put in his definition of flow, although they are actually more like stock. Some people may have gone from being on income support with a disability premium, may have been beneficiaries in the past, or may have had some contributions. They might go on to jobseeker's allowance for a while, and then come back to IB. Many of the people whom the hon. Gentleman would say were flow have been economically inactive for some time. That is why it is not helpful to make such a division. That division undermined some of his policy prescriptions, too.

Pathways to work is innovative and is starting to look effective. We do not yet know what the long-term impact will be, so one has to be cautious about predicting too much for it until we know its impact. However, early indications are certainly very positive. Some of the graphs that can be plotted showing the impact that it can have are quite startling. The hon. Gentleman must remember that many of the people who are assisted by pathways to work have been economically inactive for many years.

We are dealing with people coming on to the benefit. That is partly because there is some churning around the system, which means that people coming on to the benefit at a certain time may have been economically inactive for some years, but also because the pathways pilots encourage volunteering. People volunteer for the pathways pilot who would not be required to do so, and they do that because they have a motivation for getting back to work. They are pleased that, often for the first time ever, they are being offered help and support, and they want to take advantage of it.

It would not be true to say that the pathways pilots deal only with people coming on to the benefit for the first time; they also deal with people who have been economically inactive for quite a long time. No doubt figures will be published as they become available, and the hon. Gentleman will be convinced then.

The hon. Gentleman also said—interestingly, I thought—that his party was thinking about supporting the new deal for disabled people. He has said that of all the new deals, the new deal for disabled people would not be abolished if the catastrophe of a Tory Government occurred in the near future.

We know that the Conservatives have some interest in the new deal for disabled people. However, may I caution the hon. Gentleman? The NDDP is not an alternative to pathways; the job-broking service that it provides is an essential part of the choices package that pathways offers to people who can benefit from it. It is a part of the process that might assist people into getting back to work. When people come forward into pathways for the work-focused interviews—to get the benefit from our specialist personal advisers about what they might be able to do, what their options are and what is available for them—one of the things offered is the NDDP. That is an essential part, just as the return-to-work credit plays an essential part in convincing people that there is a financial return to going into work. Pathways encompasses all those things, as well as the condition management programmes, which can help people understand that the condition with which they live is not the absolute bar that they may have come to think it is to their participation in the labour market. All these elements of pathways are an essential part of making it a success.

Different people will require different parts of that choices package. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda made clear, the NDDP is an essential part of pathways, not an alternative to it.

The Minister talked about the new deal for disabled people. What are the predictions about what share of the new deal budget will go to disabled people? At the moment, 3 per cent. of the £750 million new deal budget goes to the disabled. That seems the reverse of how it should be, as the disabled have the most trouble getting into work. Is there any prediction that a larger percentage will go in their direction?

The hon. Gentleman is seeing that in our highly successful economy, which has the lowest level of unemployment for 30 years, Jobcentre Plus is having to focus more on the economically inactive. Much of the rest of the unemployment problem has been solved. In a typical constituency there will be perhaps three times as many people on inactive benefits as there are jobseekers in the traditional sense of being unemployed and looking for work.

In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, that number is even higher, and he made that point very well. Given the circumstances in which his constituents find themselves, he is right to concentrate on how the Government can assist, because that is one of the biggest issues in his constituency. I thought that his remarks made that clear.

Traditional unemployment has declined significantly, and that has not been some kind of accident or manna from heaven; it has come about because of the extremely high-quality economic management that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has brought to his role. The number of people in employment continues to rise, more people are in work than ever before, employment has increased by almost 2 million since 1997 and the underlying trend remains upwards. We have the highest level of employment and the lowest level of unemployment in the G8, and unemployment is now at its lowest level for 30 years.

On one of the points made previously, the number of new vacancies remains consistently high. It is not that jobs are not there, but that we have to make sure that people have the confidence, ability, training and ambition to claim their rightful place in the world of work.

It is also true that in some mining constituencies people's expectation of work has had to change. In the past, work was done by a man, manually and underground, within half a mile of his home. Today, none of those factors is true for the majority of jobs, which are just as likely to be done by women, probably will not be manual and might involve computer skills. Changing that skill base is so difficult for those not in work.

I accept that point. All contributors to the debate have made fair points.

This is a complex issue. It is not about whether people are trying to hide from the labour market, whether they are completely incapable of working because of a medical condition, or whether they are trying to avoid work; it is about a complex series of psychological and other barriers, including attitudinal barriers and discrimination against disabled people in the workplace, all of which we have to tackle if we are to solve the problem.

We are taking positive steps forward on all those things. It is just as important for my hon. Friend's constituents that the Government are setting about outlawing disability discrimination in the workplace. It is all very well having jobs, but perhaps employers do not see disabled people, or those who have been unemployed or on inactive benefits for many years, as capable of doing them, or do not regard them as desirable employees. We have to get over those myths.

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was able in his pre-Budget report to announce the extension of pathways to work. We in the DWP are pleased with that because we have seen its potential. My hon. Friend might be interested to know that in Wales the extension will include the eastern valleys, Swansea bay and west Wales, thereby ensuring that support of the pathways covers almost 60 per cent. of IB claimants in Wales. It is a huge and exciting new opportunity and we look forward to taking it forward in that nation.

My hon. Friend made many points about proposals for reform. I am glad that he welcomed the extension of pathways to work. In his own way, the hon. Member for Chesterfield also welcomed it. However, I was not sure whether the hon. Member for Wycombe welcomed it because he seemed to focus on the new deal for disabled people as the answer, whether or not it was in place. I do not believe that that would be as effective a way forward as having the NDDP in the choices package as one of the options for people to take forward with the advice of specialist personal advisers. Nevertheless, I am glad that the roll-out was generally welcomed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda made a number of points about mental health, as did the hon. Member for Wycombe. Mental health issues are predominantly leading people on to IB and my hon. Friend is right to say that the categorisation of such matters covers a wide range of conditions, issues and situations. We all recognise that that is a major issue. I have noticed that from everybody's contributions today, and any solution to inactive benefits needs to tackle that fully.

My hon. Friend made some positive points and incisive suggestions. He mentioned the over-prescription of anti-depressants by doctors—particularly GPs—and that was also referred to by other hon. Members. The role of GPs is important, not only because they initially sign somebody on to sick pay or IB for the first period, but because they are influential and important in advising their patients about what is good for their health. If we are to make a big impact on inactivity, we need to ensure that GPs thoroughly understand the consequences of what they do, not just in giving out sick notes initially—although there are good reasons why they do so—but because of the longer-term impact of being unemployed and inactive on an individual's health.

GPs are hugely trusted by their patients, which is not surprising, and their attitude to the potential for returning to work will often have a big impact on the approach of the individual on inactive benefits..

We know that we must ensure that we take GPs and other doctors with us. We are not trying to suggest to GPs that they should not sign people off when they should be signed off, but we are trying to get across to them that work can play a very important part in restoring and retaining good health, particularly in respect of low-level mental health concerns.

One of pathways' quiet and not yet fully recognised impacts is the work that is being done between Jobcentre Plus and local health services, not only in respect of condition management programmes but in ensuring that there is a much closer understanding between local GPs and primary care trusts in England—and the relevant structures in Wales—about what is good for the person who is the patient on the one hand, and our client who is on inactive benefits on the other hand. Those are very important side effects of the impact of pathways.

Several Members asked about the pre-Budget report announcement on advisers in GPs surgeries. We are deciding on the detail of that, and I am not in a position today to give chapter and verse of how it will work. However, we are working closely with devolved Administrations, as well as with the NHS, on all aspects of our approach to tackling inactivity, and on the reform programme that we are discussing. We intend to trial giving GPs additional help on fitness for work issues through providing additional skills for specialist GPs and placing employment advisers in GP surgeries where that is requested. That is not about us camping in GP surgeries regardless of whether the health professionals want that; it is about all of us working together to improve the life of individuals who are both the patients of the GP and our clients.

We will have discussions with the GP profession on this because it is very important that GPs buy in to it. We do not want to impose it from the outside. We work closely with the Department of Health in deciding where and how we are going to trial these interventions.

One of the important things about pathways is that it has fostered much closer working between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health at national level and, in particular, at local level. In some pathways areas, GPs and PCTs have become enthused about the potential of this work. The condition management programmes are paid for out of additional moneys, so we are not taking away from local PCTs money that would be used on other services. These are additional moneys that are there to fill a gap. I hope that there will be more of that in future.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda referred to our new Jobcentre Plus offices as Ikea-like. I hope that that is a compliment. I assume he meant that they had clean lines and bright colours, and that they were pleasant places to be in. It is the whole point of Jobcentre Plus that its offices are not dingy, hidden, dark and forbidding places where people have to go once every two weeks to be disapproved of for being on benefit. That is a fair description of the state in which the Conservatives left some of the estate of the Department of Social Security, as the Department was called then. I do not blame the hon. Member for Wycombe personally, but it is clear from the state of some parts of the old DSS estate that when his party was in power it did not intend to make claiming entitlements a pleasant experience. We are rightly transforming that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda raised the issue of the 85 processing jobs in the Rhondda and the Department's plans to move them to different valleys. I understand his point, and I am happy to examine the matter and come back to him on it. At the end of his remarks, he strongly made the point that he is not conducting a campaign against malingerers. I assure him that the Government do not think that people on IB are malingerers, and we are not conducting a campaign against them.

I have just noticed that the Department's press release on 2 December refers to a

"Government drive to end the 'sick note' culture."

A sick-note culture is not exactly the same as what the Minister was saying, but perhaps she could expand on what the Government think the sick-note culture is.

That is a culture among GPs, some of whom openly admit handing out sick notes without being as careful as they should be, and is not aimed at individuals who receive those sick notes and trust their doctors. I have already made points, which I do not intend to reiterate, about the importance of my Department working closely through Jobcentre Plus pathways with our colleagues, GPs and local health services to ensure that we achieve what is best for their patient and our customer.

The hon. Member for Wycombe gave us interesting glimpses of future Conservative policy, although he bemoaned the fact that he is not in a position to make announcements because he is too low in the food chain. I would be interested to know who is trying to gobble him up, but I assure him that it is not me; I am just trying to deal with his arguments. He complained about the taxation and benefits system becoming more complicated, but made no reference to the fact that one role of specialist IB personal advisers is to ensure that people are fully aware of the implications of any action they might take in respect of the financial rewards that they will receive either from work or through tax credits and remaining on benefit. That aspect of the pathways' pilot has been popular among those who come through to work-focused interviews, because somebody can fully explain to them the linking rules and implications of any course of action, such as going for a job, getting training, applying for the new deal for disabled people or trying out permitted work. We are in a much better position, through Jobcentre Plus, to ensure that people do not have to do that for themselves, and can be guided.

The hon. Gentleman finished his remarks by saying that a Conservative Government, if elected, would build on some Labour projects. He accused us, with a great deal of cheek, of being slow to get started on dealing with inactivity. From the party that created that inactivity during its 18 years in office, that took the biscuit. He also said that we were engaged in overly bureaucratic practices to ensure that public money handed over to organisations providing services is properly spent. Surely he cannot be advocating handing over public money to organisations outside of Government without checking that we are getting value for money and that they are spending it correctly. I do not call that bureaucracy; I call it being careful with the public finances, which we are obliged to be.

The hon. Gentleman also argued that the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury have not invested enough funds into pathways. He must have written his speech before the pre-Budget statement, because we have just invested an extra £220 million into pathways, which by anyone's estimation is a large and welcome amount of money. I am sure that once we get on with the job, that money will assist the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and other people who for too long have been abandoned to inactivity by previous Governments who did not care. That will not continue to be the case under this Government.

"Six VCs before breakfast" is an extravagant claim for any regiment to make, but the Lancashire Fusiliers won them in the landing on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915. General Sir Ian Hamilton wrote in despatches that

"it was to the complete lack of the senses of danger or of fear of this daring battalion that we owe our astonishing success".

That same gallantry has characterised the Lancashire Fusiliers in every action they have fought from their formation in 1688. Every year in Bury, which borders Rochdale, we celebrate to this day the Fusiliers' gallantry in what must be one of the most memorable British battles, which involved some of the most courageous soldiers that our infantry have ever seen.

As a result of that passion, history and local context I have asked for today's Adjournment debate; I and my constituency recognise that 13 towns and cities in this country have given the predecessor regiments to the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers the freedom of their boroughs, towns and cities because of such heroic acts. The RRF is the parent regiment for the four historic infantry regiments that were amalgamated in 1970 and 1992, and is now under threat. The RRF can be dated back to June 1685, and is on record as being the first ever infantry regiment to receive the title of "Royal" and can be traced to the formulation of a regiment to guard the ordnance of the Tower of London under King James II. There is no doubt about the compelling history of the RRF and the four areas, and it has a home in the hearts of the people.

I assure the hon. Lady that opinion is as strong in Northumberland and Tyneside as in her area, particularly so because the people there, like her constituents, had to accept a major reorganisation. They thought that the result of it would at least be that the identity they had managed to preserve under the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers could be preserved in future, and not threatened as it is today.

Indeed.

However, one of the things that is incumbent on all of us as parliamentarians and passionate Fusilier supporters is to recognise that they are soldiers through and through. Throughout the various regimental histories of the Fusiliers—they amalgamated eventually into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers—they have been soldiers to their fingertips.

The soldiers realise that what the Army Board and the Army are trying to do to reformulate the arms plot—the way that postings and jobs are rotated on a two-year cycle—has changed. They realise that it is the most disruptive thing to family life and, therefore, to retention. It also has an impact on recruitment to a modern-day Army. The Army has always changed, ever since the first infantry battalions and regiments were created. It is a way of staying on top of our game and all soldiers worth their salt know it.

I want to place on the record my appreciation for what the Army Board is trying to do to improve the lives of the families and the soldiers who serve our country well, as well as to ensure that our armed forces, especially the infantry battalions, are constructed in a way that meets the needs of modern-day warfare. I would further like to stress that I utterly endorse the criteria, as I understand them, that the Army Board—not politicians—has set itself in that task.

I am married to an infantryman, and am somebody who is now meant to be a lieutenant-colonel on the armed forces parliamentary scheme, although I am sure that I do not deserve the rank. One of things that is important to put on the record and make public is that communications in peacetime in the Army are a bit of an anachronism. I will use that mechanism to communicate that the matter that we are discussing is not a politicians' cut or reorganisation; it is being done by military men and women in the best interests of the British Army. We are talking about their view as soldiers.

The hon. Lady is speaking with great passion and I am sure that every hon. Member agrees with her. Does she agree with me that, given that the Army Board met yesterday, it would be in everyone's best interests if we knew as soon as possible what decision was taken?

Having met my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State with a delegation of people who as parliamentarians share my passion for the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers and the contribution that it has made, is making and should make to the future of the British infantry, I agree with the hon. Gentleman—and I am sure that the Secretary of State agrees—that it is in no one's interests for the process to be strung out, particularly as there has already been a period of uncertainty.

Let me return to the review. It is important to place on the record the fact that there is a lot of agreement about changing the arms plot and the aims and ambitions. However, I am extremely worried that there is deviation from the central purpose of the review. Several things must be adhered to under the success criteria of the executive committee of the Army Board. First, whatever changes happen, recruitment cannot be damaged. That is just common sense. Whatever regimental and battalion structure is proposed subsequent to the review must be sustainable. That means that a recruiting footprint must be left throughout the British isles.

An important Army doctrine underpins what we are discussing. I shall quote from The Daily Telegraph, but I understand this from many sources:

"Gen Sir Mike Jackson, Chief of General Staff, is determined to get rid of the historic single-battalion regiments, amalgamating them into larger, more flexible multi-battalion regiments."

I understand from all military sources that those are known in common parlance as super-regiments, consisting of two or more battalions. In modern-day warfare, they are far more flexible. There is no need to re-role. What has been described is the only way in which we can change the arms plot over a two-year period we want to, and is therefore totally sensible. Given those points, it is very disturbing that of the 38 British infantry battalions, the six poorest recruiters historically are a Prince of Wales regiment, the Irish regiment—the one remaining one—and four Scottish regiments.

My right hon. Friend the Minister who will reply to the debate is a Scot, and I would not like to say that he is biased, although I hope that his constituents think that he is. However, to us mere English, and particularly to a Lancashire lass, now that it is readily acknowledged that the Army Board has said that Scotland can take only one hit and only one battalion can be cut, the time has come for us all to rise up and ask why. It is ludicrous that Scotland, with only 9 per cent. of the population, is expected to find 15 per cent. of the infantry. Given that four of the seven Scottish battalions are in the worst six in respect of recruitment, the fact that we may have to chop one of the historically most successful super-regiments in the British Army in terms of recruitment goes against the success criteria that the Army Board set itself. I say to anyone who says that this is a case of meddling politicians that it is not; it is Army politics afoot. I want to bring the Army back sharply to the success criteria. The way in which many of my constituents and I will judge whether it has done a good job is whether it sticks to its original criteria.

Let me sound a second caveat about the criteria, which relates to the figures for non-British nationals from foreign and Commonwealth—F and C—countries who are recruited into the British Army. At the start of the review, as I understand it, it was considered that everybody was a body and therefore such recruits were accepted as equal when it came to the counting. Then when people got into the detail, that did not suit the purpose, so suddenly, halfway through the review, we hear that perhaps F and C figures will be taken out. As I understand it, they have been counted for only two years and no one told any regiments that have been recruiting from F and C countries that two years down the line it might jeopardise the whole future of their regiment. It is not cricket, to say the least, that the review should start off including F and C figures and then, halfway down the line, say, "Well, the only way that we can get the Queen's division and the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in is by removing the F and C figures to establishment." If those recruits are prepared to fight for our country, they should be counted. I defy anyone to say that an F and C soldier in any regiment fights less passionately for Queen and country than the recruits from my constituency of Rochdale or from any other constituency.

I ask the Minister to reassure me that we are not taking an 18-month or two-year snapshot of figures to stack up the preferred decision. The Ministry of Defence gave a detailed piece of evidence—a manning study over 10 years of all 38 infantry battalions—to the Select Committee on Defence. I hope that the Minister can also assure me that decisions will be judged against those long-term data of performance and trend, including F and C figures.

Although it is not intrinsic in terms of the hard core, another criterion that is absolutely key to how the Army does business is that the decision must be, and be seen to be, equitable. I understand that that is also part of the Army Board's criteria. As I said, under the Labour Government's White Paper of 1967 and in 1992, the Fusiliers took the brunt of some of the heaviest amalgamation and changes in the British infantry, and so did their two sister regiments in the Queen's division.

I understand that the Army Board has agreed to take one of the four battalions that need to be amalgamated from Scotland, one from King's division and one from the Prince of Wales's division. It is then stuck with finding a fourth battalion, and I believe that there is a debate about it. If F and C figures are removed, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers or the Yorkshire regiments in the King's division should lose one battalion. Given that General Jackson is on the record as saying that the doctrine is to move to super-battalions, how could cutting a division with three super-regiments recruiting in 17 counties and many metropolitan districts possibly be justified to safeguard three single-battalion regiments recruiting in one county? It defies belief. As I said to the Prime Minister at Prime Minister's Question Time, on major criteria and on the criteria of equity and fairness, I hope that the Army Board has kicked into touch the 11th-hour suggestion from the director of infantry to cut one of the two remaining battalions from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

Let us be clear: it is not just the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers that would pay the price but the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment and the Royal Anglian Regiment, which would have to merge with the one remaining battalion of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers to make two super-regiments of three battalions, which would subsequently make even weaker the recruitment hold in the historic areas of all three regiments. For what gain? Because we are too soft to cut the Scots? I am sorry, but that is typical of our Parliament. However, I thought better of the military; I did not think that they were soft. I realise that I am threatening all the revenue going to my constituency via our Scottish Chancellor—I am sorry, Gordon.

However, the fact remains that we must come back to the criteria. I hope that the Army Board adhered to its criteria in the long meeting of the executive committee of the Army Board—ECAB—yesterday. We have battalions and regiments that have always played the game, have always been compliant with the British Army's need to change and have always followed the doctrine willingly and successfully. I am talking not only about the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, but about the other two regiments within the Queen's division. It would be unpalatable news and hard to defend if they were asked to pay the ultimate price, and there were no remaining Fusilier battalion or regiment in England. Given the way in which the Fusiliers have served our country for 400 years or more, that would be poor treatment of them.

The Clerk of the Defence Committee sent me a copy of the memorandum from the Ministry of Defence, FC3, entitled "Future Capabilities". It states:

"The Committee should note that the F&C figures have not been, and are not being, used as a discriminator in decisions about battalion restructuring (not least because the fact that a battalion has a higher proportion of F&C soldiers need not suggest that they could not recruit from within the UK if required).

I am a mere Back Bencher, but I would not want the Secretary of State for Defence to have to justify to the Defence Committee a cut in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, bearing in mind that the Ministry of Defence has given such evidence in its review. I must explain that such action would be a cut to the infantry, but not in the overall establishment figures. Everyone talks about overstretch, but it could not have failed to strike many of us who have relationships with the Army that one of the biggest problems is not in finding infantry people—gorgeous and wonderful though they are—but in finding those with certain skills, such as chefs, medics and logisticians. The more we are committed, whether in peacetime or in theatre operations such as Telic 1, the more we need to bump up those skills to make sure that they are supporting the infantry.

Can my right hon. Friend assure me that the Army Board will adhere to its original criteria, for which there is much support? I wish to put on the record the concern of my constituents and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), who cannot be here today because he is undergoing an operation. A petition containing 2,000 signatures was drawn up in four days in my constituency. The passion for the Fusiliers is of an unusual order of magnitude. Such matters are absolutely crucial for the future of the British infantry.

I am sure that those associated with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, both past and present, will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Mrs. Fitzsimons) for securing this important debate. Understandably, the issue is close to her heart and she has made many pertinent points about the regiment's quality and effectiveness. No one can gainsay those points.

I genuinely welcome my hon. Friend's contributions to the wider debate. She met my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence yesterday. I was not present at those discussions, but I have been told that there was a strong debate and that my hon. Friend put forward her argument in her usual forthright way. I wish to give her the absolute assurance that there is no ministerial hands-on in respect of preferential treatment of regiments. I do not recommend it for everyday reading, but we need only look at the Scottish press to see what has been generated. I understand that the Save the Scottish Regiments campaign is talking about standing a candidate against me, so that is hardly a sign that we are favouring the Scottish regiments.

We are aware of the speculation about the future of the Fusiliers, whose 1st Battalion served with such distinction last year in the liberation of Basra. Today's discussion gives us a chance to ventilate the key issues associated with the debate, and it is worth explaining once again what we are doing with the infantry, why we are doing it and what it would mean not to do it. I must also stress that although the executive committee of the Army Board met yesterday, no final decision has been taken. Ministers do not know the outcome of that meeting because we have not yet received the Army's formal recommendations.

The history is that the Army has always been subject to change, sometimes dramatically. The history of the regiment that we are discussing today is testament to that. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was formed in 1968, bringing together four infantry regiments. Its three battalions were reduced to two in 1992 following the "Options for Change" process. In themselves, those events demonstrate that the Army must evolve and adapt to meet future challenges, and that it has always done so.

To ignore reality would truly be a case of failing our troops. It would also be damaging to the high standards expected of a modern fighting force. We would all agree that the Army needs to be in a position to fight the battles of today and tomorrow, not yesterday, and the changes planned for the infantry are part of that evolution. There are two key reasons for them: first, the conclusion by the Army Board that the infantry arms plot no longer represents the best way to deliver operational capability, and secondly, the progress towards lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

Let me deal with the impact of events in Northern Ireland first. With the improved security climate, it was judged that we could remove four battalions from the 14,500 troops allocated to the Province. That provided an opportunity to look at how best to organise the Army for expeditionary warfare. The judgment was made that the Army would be best served and best prepared for the challenges of the future if infantry battalions were less reliant on reinforcements when deployed on operations and if our forces had the right balance of key enablers such as logisticians, engineers and intelligence personnel. My hon. Friend alluded to that point in her contribution. We therefore decided that around 500 of the posts freed up by the change in Northern Ireland would be reinvested into the infantry to develop more robust and resilient units, while the rest would be used to strengthen those key enablers crucial to sustainable operational capability.

The most important factor in changes to the structure of the infantry is the decision to end the infantry arms plot. I appreciate the points made by my hon. Friend on that issue. Not everyone takes the same point of view, but there is a growing awareness of the decision's importance. The arms plot is a process by which infantry battalions change roles and locations every few years. It maintained broad experience and variety, which was especially important during the cold war when the Army was less expeditionary, but it also reduced the availability of infantry battalions. Currently, of the 40 infantry battalions, only 26 or 27 are available for deployment at any time, with some seven or eight unavailable due to the arms plot. That is some 20 per cent. of total infantry strength. It is neither practical nor efficient to continue with such a process. Ending the arms plot will make the most of the 36 battalions available for deployment, as opposed to the 26 or 27 at present. The logic and benefits are undeniable; ceasing the arms plot will increase our operational capability.

The frequent moves caused by the arms plot are also disruptive to family life and impact adversely on retention. My hon. Friend recognised that in her contribution.

Will the Minister give way?

I will not, because I have less time than normal. I should have had 15 minutes, but my hon. Friend understandably exercised her judgment and used as much time as she could. I do not intend to allow any interventions, as I have to deal with the issues.

Reflecting changes in wider society, family stability has become much more of an issue for our people. The end of the arms plot will mean that the Army is able to offer much greater stability for soldiers and their families. In future, battalions will be fixed by role and largely by location, and that will release resources routinely tied up in moving location or retraining. The Army will therefore be more capable and effective, because not only will more battalions be available for operations but the new structure will provide continuity of expertise in role and greater brigade stability. That can only be a good thing in light of our expectation that brigade-level deployments will be most commonly used. It will also mean that career development for officers and senior non-commissioned officers can be much more carefully planned. Individuals will be able to move more easily between battalions for career development and increased breadth of experience. At the moment that is largely dependent on the role that an individual's battalion has at any one time. It is restrictive and inefficient. But all this demands a change in the way that the infantry is structured. Multi-battalion regiments are not a new concept.

We already have one: the Fusiliers.

If the right hon. Gentleman will listen, I will come to that point. The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is one example of how that already exists within the Army of today. There are others. Indeed, half the infantry is already structured in this way. Let me make this clear: we value highly the benefits and traditions of the regimental system. Extending the large regimental system does not undermine that philosophy—far from it. It secures the benefits of the regimental system for the future. The RRF could be a good example that could be used to point out how this has been developed in the past.

There is no single model for a regimental system. What is described as the regimental system is a structural dynamic that has evolved and adjusted over time to meet the changing operating environment. The fact that we contemplate a further evolution now should come as no surprise. It reflects the current and future operating environments. I ask right hon. and hon. Members just to reflect on that. Change is taking place. It always has been a process of evolution. Why the resistance now to examining our current structure and looking for better solutions?

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way specifically on that point?

I have already pointed out to the hon. Gentleman that he could make representations to the Secretary of State as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale has done. Very few of our regiments and corps exist today in the same form in which they existed in the past. The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is an excellent example of this, having been formed from four previous infantry line regiments. There has been a constant process of change. The idea that because we are making changes, we will lose regimental tradition is not borne out.

The past also tells us that when new regiments are formed—the RRF is one example—they have maintained their previous traditions, while also developing their own. That is true in Scotland too. The Highlanders and the Royal Highland Fusiliers have retained their previous traditions as well as developing new traditions for the future.

May I just stress and get my right hon. Friend to agree that I did not go into rose-tinted emotion about regimental history, apart from starting with some powerful quotes. The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers has always done the bidding of ECAB and the Army Board and has always been compliant with change. We are not arguing about tradition, but about having a strong, effective infantry.

We have to await the outcome of ECAB's determination. My hon. Friend indicated—I do not know how she knows this—that it was a long meeting yesterday—

The Secretary of State told me.

Well, it was probably still going on when she was meeting the Secretary of State. Certainly it was going on when I left my office last night. That shows the intensity of the debate that has taken place. There could be cynics who think that it has been got up as a cosmetic exercise. It has not. We have sought to consult personnel throughout the Army about what they would like to see for the future. That is clearly a two-way process.

People have asked why we did not make a quick, neat decision. That would have denied everyone the opportunity to make their contribution. We should be complimented. I know that my hon. Friend has said how well she thinks that the process has been conducted, but there are others who say that we should simply make a decision and get out of the way. We have gone through the consultation process. We have listened to what has been said. ECAB and the Army Board have to weigh up all of those matters.

I shall begin by saying a few words about the context of this debate. I am grateful for the support for my remarks from a number of colleagues and from those on the Front Benches.

This debate has been sought by a cross-party group of Christian MPs, a number of whom are present. They are taking part for a variety of reasons. First, we want to make it clear that those of us in Parliament who have faith are no different from the millions of people in this country who take their faith to work with them every day— from those who work in the home to those who work in hospitals, shops, offices and every other corner of daily life. Our faith sustains our work in an entirely natural manner. We share that with those of other faiths in our society, such as Muslims, Jews, Hindus and Sikhs.

Secondly, we wish to make a contribution to countering the current cynicism about political life by showing that MPs can come together across party boundaries to address matters of common interest. That tends to happen quite a bit in Parliament, but members of the public can be forgiven for hearing only about conflict and difference. In their minds, a typical debate might follow a familiar pattern: I explain how the Government have got it all wrong and which of my party's policies will put it right, the Minister explains how all life began in 1997 and why everything is now fantastic but that we are at risk of returning to mediaeval times if my party wins the next election, and, in between, we both manage to poke sticks at the Liberal Democrats. I am not saying that we do not have such debates, but that this one will draw attention to the hidden agenda of politics, which is not what people allege their opponents will do on being elected that they have not already spelled out, but what opposing parties hold in common but rarely express.

Thirdly, I would like this debate to be about how those of faith in Parliament meet together, support each other and wish now to address a number of areas where we hope to contribute from a Christian perspective, and how we welcome those of other faiths and encourage them to have no qualms about expressing themselves in a similar manner.

British public life is at an uneasy junction. We are not north Americans, who seem to find these things easier, and we are aware of the sensitivities involved in bringing faith and politics together. However, those of us who were at the Advent service at Lambeth palace last night could not have received more gentle encouragement, and nor could the wider public have been more reassured, by the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Addressing just this point, he spoke of those of faith in public life not responding to life's problems with "easy or glib certainties" but exercising patient listening and answering a call to discern not simply the noise of a majority or of a media campaign but the wisdom of God expressed in the harmony of his creation, and that that reference point, as an addition to those of politics, should be a help to us and not a hindrance or a cause of concern for others.

Let me also say briefly what this debate is not. It is not the expression of some form of new party. We are strong supporters both in our own parties and of the robust debate that is essential to provide choice for the electorate and clarity in our own positions. We believe that Christians should be involved in party politics, and exercise their influence within all parties. Nor is this an attempt to find a complete consensus on difficult issues. We may agree on analysis and on some ideas to press forward, but we will not agree about everything, and we will support our party colleagues for the ideas they put forward—we will certainly do so if we have influenced them.

I hope that the area of consensus might grow, but all of us in Parliament know what happens to ideas and legislation that everyone believes are right; they get less scrutiny than they should and we often end up with bigger problems than we started with. No former Minister who had responsibility for the Child Support Agency could ever believe otherwise.

Finally, this debate should not be seen as sermonising by the sanctimonious, and nor should any other debate that we might seek to introduce. We all believe that our faith has brought us close to our own human frailty. We all mess up. We have all experienced the sort of human failure that leads us to have compassion for those in difficulties. That is why Christians are drawn to work in so many areas of life where there are problems. We care for our neighbours, the poor, the hungry, the dispossessed and the imprisoned. But, however any of us may try, no Christian leads the perfect life.

Let me turn to the subject of today's debate. I recognise at once the sensitivity of dealing with such intimate matters as the family. However, there is no doubt that it is a legitimate issue of public concern and debate. Our family structure has a public as well as a private connotation. Yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly devoted a debate to the 10th anniversary of the international year of the family. The preamble affirms the obvious. It states that

"the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society."

That was not put very elegantly, but we know what was meant.

The Government are closely involved in picking up the pieces when things go wrong for families, in providing financially in circumstances when families might have provided for themselves, and in having a public debate about whether marriage is the best and most stable option for bringing up children—the Government have done that in the past few years. The debate may have moved on; last week, the Minister for Children, Young People and Families said:

"Stability really matters for kids and people are more likely to stay together if they are married".

What are the consequences of that statement?

Let me acknowledge one or two other things before I get to the heart of my concerns. Polarisation of views on the issue has caused harm by stifling debate and creating the ground only for conflict. Few, if any, of our marriages or families are perfect. We all know the difficulties and can acknowledge fault and hurt, but that should not stop us talking about ideals to which we can all strive. Changes in society over the past 40 years have been right in exposing and denouncing the shamefully hidden abuse and violence in some marriages. It is right that there has been a greater openness in talking of problems in relationships and that there has been more equality within marriage. Family relationships have benefited from that, and that has been a good thing.

Equally, there have been other changes, which are now impossible to ignore. It is now right to challenge the impression given by some in the past that marriage was a form of prison and that the freedom and happiness of adults was all that was required to ensure that children were similarly happy.

Why should the interest of Christians in these matters have been such a source of concern? The world expects those with faith to be involved in international development and in the relief of poverty in our streets and those abroad. For some reason, our interest in families appears too often to have been greeted with a sense of suspicion.

Perhaps I can square the circle. I acknowledge that 30 or 40 years ago, Christian campaigners were portrayed as almost solely concerned with moral justification when they voiced worry about changes in family structure in this country. They appeared to represent a finger-wagging authoritarian God, and concern was overladen with condemnation. That was very much against the spirit of the times.

At that time, however, there was no evidence of what those changes would bring. It was an argument in a vacuum—the worst sort—in which prejudice and ideology competed and it was more important to win than to keep an eye on the causes of concern. Now things are different. Although there have been perfectly good outcomes to some parts of the family revolution, as I have acknowledged, other things that have had poor outcomes have had dreadful personal consequences for too many adults and for too many children. Therefore, the approach of my hon. Friends and colleagues is not to proclaim a finger-wagging God, but a father who loves us and who gives us a structure for living that is designed to fulfil us, and to let us live life joyfully and to the full and, when things go wrong for us, to provide a pathway back, rather than blame and exclusion.

Seen in such a light, what are my worries? I am worried about the impact of brokenness on so many people—young and old alike. I offer hon. Members a series of statistics, which do not give comfort and are not meant to, but we must acknowledge them. Two thirds of couples divorcing have children under 16. An unknown number of cohabiting couples separate every year. Cohabiting parents separate at about five times the rate of married parents. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation published research in 2004 that estimated that one in three children will experience parental divorce or separation before the age of 16.

Nearly one in five babies are born in a home with no father. A recent survey-based report into child maltreatment from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children questioned 2,869 18 to 24-year-olds about their childhood experiences. The research revealed strong links between child maltreatment and other family relationship problems and showed that children experiencing frequent changes in family structure were especially vulnerable to abuse. Children living in step-families are three times as likely to run away from home as children living with both their natural parents are. Children of lone parents are twice as likely to do so.

The hon. Gentleman makes a profoundly interesting case, but surely he is not trying to argue that people who are married should invariably stay together for the sake of the children, perhaps in situations that are fraught with disharmony, or where abuse, domestic violence or child abuse may occur.

No, I am not seeking to argue that. In situations where there is abuse or violence, as I said earlier, one of the changes is that society has been more open in bringing such things out and people no longer have to remain in such abusive relationships. I am arguing that parents should be careful about their relationship with each other and recognise the impact of a relationship of conflict on the children. They should do all in their power, with help from others if need be, to resolve such conflicts before they lead to separation. That is our concern. People should not stay together at all costs, but they should recognise that there are also costs of separation.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that, and he leads me on to another point. From my perspective, it sometimes seems that committed Christians see the family as something entire in itself that does not need any assistance or support from the state. He seems to be leading us down a different path.

I am, and I think that if the hon. Gentleman listens to the contributions from colleagues, he will find further elucidation on that. I am grateful for the intervention because it gives me the chance to rebut some of the charges that have been made against those from my and other standpoints. It is good that he has brought those matters out.

I shall return to the statistics. Children on the at-risk register were eight times more likely to be living with their natural mother and a father substitute, compared with the national distribution for similar social classes. Children of separated families are twice as likely to have behavioural problems, perform less well in school, become sexually active at a younger age, suffer depression and turn to drugs, smoking and heavy drinking. In May 2004, Cambridge university reported that teachers were losing the battle to maintain discipline in schools because of the breakdown in family relationships.

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, because he is making a powerful case. May I remind him that the Office for National Statistics published a report three or four years ago on the mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain? It found that the incidence of conduct disorder in boys aged 11 to 15 in a single-parent household was three times higher than in a married household. However, even more significantly, there was no difference between a cohabiting household and a single-parent household. Does not that tell us something about the value of marriage?

I think it does, and I will come to that point later. However, the collection of statistics is making its own case, which is one of concern, not condemnation.

Children born to cohabiting parents are more likely to see their parents split up than those who are born inside marriage. Within five years of a child's birth only 8 per cent. of married couples have split up, compared with 52 per cent. of cohabitees and 25 per cent. of those who marry after birth. That is the starting point for our range of concerns in this debate.

I have two pleas for the policy makers in all our parties. First, please include the expertise of those in faith groups across the country who already work in such fields even more than the Government already have done. I commend the practical work being done by CARE, Care for the Family, the Family Matters Institute, the Salvation Army and a host of others. They deserve more support, but they do not need to be taken over by Government. To answer the point made by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson), although I recognise that the Government have a legitimate interest, they should not feel that they have to be the sole provider of support when families break down. They could do more to outsource that work to those who are already engaged on it.

I now come to my second plea. I am delighted to see the Minister in his place, and I fully appreciate the reason why the Minister for Children, Young People and Families cannot be here. I urge the Minister to urge his right hon. Friend to be bolder, following her comment on marriage and stability last week. Surveys show that marriage remains a popular ideal for most of our young people, but they are woefully under-prepared for its realities away from the glossy, over-romanticised hype. We should put support into marriage preparation courses run by Churches and others and into conflict resolution within marriage, consider restoring financial advantages to marriage, add a marriage message to teen pregnancy prevention, and work with the new grain to make marriage cool again and turn around what is almost a reverse stigma that seems to have grown up around marriage. The financial and social benefits could be huge.

None of this is said to suggest that those who are not in such a relationship are in any way second class or excluded—a concern that I know Ministers have had in the past. For too long, we have been so shy of that that we have ignored the evidence of the benefits of a stable relationship, to which the Minister for Children, Young People and Families has referred.

I close by referring again to the successful debate at the UN yesterday, and the UN's support for the recent Doha declaration. That declaration has been supported wholeheartedly by 149 out of 192 members of the United Nations. It is significant that the European Union has not quite been able to muster as much support for the declaration, and I urge the Government to discuss further with EU colleagues precisely what their stance is.

The Doha declaration says, in relation to marriage, that the nation should

"uphold, preserve and defend the institution of marriage".

It says that we should

"take effective measures to strengthen the stability of marriage by, among other things, encouraging the full and equal partnership of husband and wife within a committed and enduring marital relationship"

and

"establish effective policies and practices to condemn and remedy abusive relationships within marriage and the family, including the establishment of public agencies to assist men, women, children and families in crisis".

John Stuart Mill, in his essay "On Liberty" in 1859, said:

"Human beings owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter."

It is time to take this familiar debate forward, on a road that has been rather less travelled in recent years, away from the polarisation of the past. Those of faith—Christian, Jewish, Muslim and others—should be closely involved, neither themselves disguising the imperfections of life, nor being derided for having faith in a secular age. We should, while welcoming the benefits of a changing society, recognise equally the harm that has been done, and therefore dedicate ourselves together to the practical and spiritual goals of repairing the unhappiness and dealing with the consequences of broken relationships for the good of society and, not least, for our children.

I shall make only a brief contribution because I know that a number of Members wish to speak. I compliment the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on securing the debate and on his speech. I do not share his religious faith, although I have utter respect for it and its principles. I suppose I should say that I have been married for 31 years, so I think that I have a reasonable knowledge of the significance and importance of marriage. However, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman is supplying us with the whole story and with everything that we need to do to support parents and the family to ensure that such a significant institution works well for existing families, families of the future and the whole of our society in years to come.

I accept entirely the argument that children benefit from stable, loving relationships between their parents. However, I wonder whether such relationships need to be within marriage and whether, in espousing marriage as having greater qualities than cohabitation, the hon. Gentleman falls into the trap that he correctly identified: denigrating other people's relationships and other ways of bringing up children.

I worry sometimes that the family lobby—I mean that in a very positive sense; there will be a great deal of consensus in this debate—gets suspicious and frightened of the idea of children's rights. Children's rights need to be at the heart of our debate on the effective upbringing of children and the quality of families. Sometimes it seems that some who speak eloquently on behalf of families set up the virtues of families in opposition to what is sometimes derisorily referred to as the children's rights lobby.

If we consider children's rights and the fundamental statement of them—the United Nations convention on the rights of the child—we see important principles that support not only the well-being of children but the ability of the right parents to bring up children as they wish, for the best interests of the child.

I do not recall the hon. Gentleman talking about poverty, although I may have missed that. The greatest commitment that this Government have entered into is the one to end child poverty in this country within a generation—by 2020. There can be nothing more destructive of children's and families' lives than the experience of poverty.

Did the hon. Gentleman disagree with any of the statistics put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) in his opening remarks? The hon. Gentleman is engaging on the question of whether one lobby should say things about the other. Will he say what he would do practically to help the plight of children in this country today?

I am very happy to, and I have embarked on that quest. One can bandy statistics around as much as one likes. [Interruption.] Having lived in and been brought up in a family, had my own family and worked with families for many years, I think that the essential quality of a family and a relationship is not whether the parents have entered into marriage, but the strength of their relationship and the care, consistency and concern that they give their children. For a blueprint for the future of children, we should return to this Government's fundamental commitment to end child poverty. There can be no more important quest for a Government intent on supporting children and families than to do that. To help people work their way out of poverty and support people in their quest to find work, we must support families in bringing up children.

We also need a wide-ranging social agenda, which starts from the needs, aspirations and participation of children. We must listen to children extremely effectively. Effective families involve and listen to their children. A wide-ranging social agenda must support parents in the vital task of parenting.

One criticism I would make of the Government is that they have not yet recognised the scientific development and cutting-edge understanding that we now have of how the development of children's brains mirrors the social interactions to which they are subject. For some 50 or 60 years, we have had Sir John Bowlby's theory of attachment, which has gained worldwide acceptance. The theory says that to give children the emotional foundation for a successful life and to assist their physical and social development, it is important during the earliest years of life that they build secure attachments with a small number of significant individuals. Recent research on children's brain development shows a physical correlation with that vital psychological theory.

It is incumbent on the Government to do more to ensure that parents understand the crucial message that in the first few days, weeks and months of life it is vital to maintain consistency in how children are managed, and to build strong relationships with them and respond effectively to them. All the research—the scientific physical theory backs up the attachment theory of the past 50 or 60 years—shows that if we attend to those issues, we will have much more attached, integrated, together and secure children and adults. We might even find that some of the problems that the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire correctly identified in society to do with fractured relationships, and some problems that the Government are addressing on other fronts, such as antisocial behaviour, crime and people's inability to maintain good working relationships, will be dealt with. We need to attend to the fundamental rights of children. We must attack poverty. We must have excellent public provision that supports parents in their parenting task, one of the hardest tasks in the world.

Through the hon. Gentleman, I wish to commend to the Government the Solihull model that was developed by our primary care trust. It was built on the scientific evidence that, when a baby grows up in an atmosphere of fear, tension and argument, the baby's brain is infused with the fight-or-flight hormones that we all have. That leads to a child who can cope only with constant "adrenalin" and has an attention deficit disorder. The logic of my argument is that, if there were stability, the parents stayed together and the fear and insecurity were taken away, babies would have less of those fight-or-flight hormones that affect their brain and development.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for providing that information. I am pleased to hear about the development in Solihull. One argument that is sometimes advanced against such an approach is that it pushes women away from the workplace and back into the family home. I disagree with that, as I do with the tendency outlined by the hon. Lady, which is that two married parents must always be together with the child. I do not believe that the science or theory of attachment means that.

The line of that argument is that, especially in the very early weeks and months of life, children need to have consistent attention from one or two—or perhaps slightly more—significant figures in their lives. Those figures do not need to be married or to be there all the time. Such a science does not militate against women working; it does not militate against men working; it does not militate against men staying at home and looking after the children and it certainly does not militate against people living together in a stable, committed relationship that ensures consistency and the effective upbringing of children. I have now said quite enough; it is important that we are having such a good debate and I look forward to hearing the contributions of others.

rose—

Order. Hon. Members who catch my eye may wish to bear in mind that many others wish to do so and that the wind-up speeches must start at 3 o'clock.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Given that many colleagues wish to speak, I shall be as brief as possible. I wish only to refer to one area where we can do something positive as a nation to improve marriages and relationships in all families in this country. Four statistics mark out the United Kingdom, in comparison with our European neighbours, as having a serious problem. We have the highest divorce rate, the highest level of teenage pregnancies, the highest number of children—one in four—in single-parent families, and poor infant mortality statistics that are closely related to teenage pregnancy figures.

The biggest and most worrying problem is not divorce, because fewer people are getting married, but the break-up of unmarried partners, which has shown a sharp increase.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that high rates of infant mortality are clearly and easily attributable to particular parts of the country? One of the real scandals was the covering up of the Black report, which highlighted several health inequalities.

I have no doubt about what the hon. Lady says, in that there are certainly areas in this country where the problem is peculiarly concentrated. However, I am sure that she would agree with several clinicians, as I do, that the link between teenage pregnancy and infant mortality is strong.

My interest in the matter was aroused when I examined homelessness. On youth homelessness, there is universal agreement among all the voluntary agencies in the sector that parental conflict—often step-parental conflict—with adolescent children sends youngsters out of their homes. They may feel not loved and not welcome when mum's new boyfriend or dad's new girlfriend moves in, which drives them on to the streets of King's Cross or elsewhere.That is just one further example of the serious national problem that we must get to grips with.

I keep in regular contact with all the 18-year-olds in my constituency; indeed, I survey them throughout the year. This year, more than three quarters of them have told me that they think that family breakdown is a serious issue for their future. They do not want it for their own lives. They hope that they will have enduring and fulfilling relationships in their own lives, and they are aware of the difficulties caused in their homes and communities by this problem.

Let me explain what depresses me about the debate. We can all rattle off statistics and say how awful the situation is, and, quite rightly, we put mechanisms in place to pick up the pieces. We need a housing system that offers housing when couples split up and two houses are needed rather than one. We need a benefits system to provide financial provision when people need it following a break-up. We need the Child Support Agency—and, my goodness, we all know that it has problems—to ensure that money gets from one side to the other. But what are we doing as a nation to turn off the tap and do something positive? What are we doing to say, "Come on. Collectively, let's find a way to make a real difference and improve all relationships, for married and non-married people, in our country"?

My piece of good news as we come up to a season of good news is that we have a role model in this country that is starting to do what I have described. I am talking about community family trusts. People who know me reasonably well know that I think that those organisations are wonderful. I do not say that they are the only type of organisation that can do the work, but 27 community family trusts have sprung up throughout the country, from the voluntary, charitable and Church sectors. They are funded in part by Government money, from the marriage and relationship support programme, which was set up in 1996 and has a budget of about £5 million. The little bit of money that goes to the trusts is very welcome. They also receive little bits of local authority money. Trusts exist in some quite tough parts of the country and are already making a difference. I see them as offering help, support and encouragement to families to ensure that they have enduring, successful and sustaining relationships.

Community family trusts came out of work that was done in America some 10 years ago. America is a very different society from the UK and it would not be right to replicate here exactly what happened there—indeed, that would not work, for a host of reasons—but let us consider the American example for a moment. We now have hard data—verified by a team of academics at the university of Texas who were brought in independently to verify them—that in communities and districts in America where work similar to that done by community family trusts has taken place, there has been a 25 per cent. reduction in the divorce rate. Those academics have calculated that that is a reduction of some 30,000 divorces in districts that have embraced the concept of a community family trust, as compared with those that have not, which is very exciting. We know that what we do must be evidence-based, but that is a positive result, which I commend to officials in the Department. They might want to study those data to see how we can lend more support to the organisations working in the UK.

Let me mention three other countries that are taking the issue seriously, because we are not alone in facing these problems. Australia is a similar Anglo-Saxon country, with some of the genetic make-up that perhaps gives people slightly more difficulty in forming harmonious relationships than people in some countries in Europe seem to have. The Australian Government are setting up a series of family relationship centres throughout their country. They will be the gateway to a range of voluntary, community and Church-based services that offer support before relationships or marriages start and all the way through them, to ensure that they are successful. Singapore and Malaysia, two different societies, are also grasping the nettle in similar ways, well before seeing the sort of statistics that we have heard about.

What are United Kingdom community family trusts like? Their effectiveness varies because many are small and operate on tiny budgets, but the best involve all the schools in their area to ensure that teaching about relationships is an essential part of the curriculum. They also work particularly closely with registrars in their area. According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, 62 per cent. of United Kingdom marriages take place in registry offices rather than churches. Many registrars want to be able to signpost relationship support services to couples who come to them to get married.

The hon. Gentleman is making a very sound case for community family trusts. Does he see them as being an adjunct to the work of Sure Start, children's centres and extended schools, or as a replacement?

From my conversations with Naomi Eisenstadt, the head of Sure Start, I would say that that organisation is just beginning to realise the importance to children's development of the relationship between their parents. The trusts should work alongside Sure Start. The entire area of relationships and family life is intensely private and personal. That has been the general view in the UK for many years. Couples often find it comforting, and easier, if services to do with such personal issues are offered by voluntary and community groups. Therefore, it would be beneficial if this work were to take place alongside that of Sure Start. I would also like Sure Start to recognise the importance of that work a little more, and to act as a signpost to the groups within communities that provide such services.

Health visitors are another vital group, enabling us to access many people who are struggling in their relationships. We know that relationships often get into difficulties when children arrive, because of the extra stresses and pressures that are produced, and that every family in this country is visited by a health visitor. Would it not be sensible to ensure that health visitors are able to flag up to couples the services that are available in a community, and to direct them towards them?

Community family trusts also do good work in prisons, and that is very well received by the prisoners concerned. I commend those organisations to the Minister, and I hope that their work can be increased throughout the UK.

I shall keep my remarks brief.

I recognise that the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) draws the inspiration for his work in this area from a particular tradition. Many of us draw our inspiration from different sources, such as religion, another political credo or personal experience. I think that all those approaches are equally valid, but as MPs, we choose to work out our views through the medium of politics and to pursue our goals through our political parties. Therefore, I make no excuse for being very single-minded in my view that this Government have been pro-family and have done everything possible to support family life and improvements in the upbringing of children.

In a way, my constituency is all about families, because they are a fundamental part of what drives most of my constituents. Two issues are of particular concern to them—the security of their finances and their certainty about public services. Those are the two elements they draw from in order to plan the future for their families. Therefore, the things that are important to them and that make a qualitative difference in their lives often are not talked about in the House. Those include, for example, child care tax credits, the enormous advances in child care that the Government have provided, the Sure Start programme, legislation on homelessness, extra finances for schools—children's centres will be key in that respect—and improvements to health care, including NHS Direct, which is an invaluable resource for improvements in care.

Equalities issues and children's issues are also important. In the contributions that we have heard, one of the elements that has arisen time and again is the problem of abusive and violent relationships, which often occur because of attitudes to women in our society. The strengthening of women's position and rights and the recognition of their equality, as well as the strengthening of the position of people with disabilities and those from black minority ethnic communities, are key to the underpinning of a society in which people's rights and views are much more greatly respected.

There are still issues to be resolved. Statistics have been quoted on the problems of teenage pregnancies and other issues, and there is no point in rehearsing them again. There are some areas in which we as politicians must think of policies that will produce some change and start to resolve some of the practical difficulties that we all see in our constituencies.

One key issue is the role of boys and young men. For example—I do not think that anyone has yet quoted this statistic—about one in four or one in six young men will have had some involvement with the criminal justice system by the time they are 25. That is a phenomenally high figure. We need to find a way in which those young men can be engaged in more constructive activities, and a way of ensuring that they do not under-perform at school—an increasing problem that many of us will have encountered. We also need to find a way of ensuring that young men in their late teens and early 20s can become involved in constructive relationships and can also see a stake for themselves in a family context. That is an issue with which many young men seem to have difficulties.

We also still need to examine ways in which we can support families that run into severe difficulties. I recognise the validity of all forms of families. In my constituency, a number of families are same-sex partnerships whose members are passionately committed both to their family unit and to their children. There is also a continuing issue related to single parents. Many single parents are passionately committed to their families and their children, but they often find that the problems caused by emerging from an extremely difficult partnership are exacerbated by having to deal with children and with poverty. In that regard, the new deal for lone parents has been a startling success, and I hope that every party would want to continue that policy.

We also need more support for housing. I agree with some of the remarks that have been made about that. We should consider some of the models for family housing projects, which provide support for families that have had particular difficulties with antisocial behaviour. A number of people who have contributed to the debate this afternoon have obviously spoken from their own experience of successful marriages. One recognises that, like me, they are extremely fortunate in that respect, particularly when one considers the turbulent times and places in which we work.

I argue, however, that the role of the Government is to provide a supportive climate for people who are working very hard to carve out successful units for themselves and a partner and to bring up children who will fulfil a constructive role in our society. I congratulate the Government on the many measures that they have put in place thus far.

We all agree—most of our constituents would—that family units are under pressure, despite the support that various Governments have provided for many years. Today, many families find themselves under pressure financially, for example, because of housing costs or for employment reasons—perhaps because of short-term contracts or because there is employment but they have to move. There is also a certain amount of peer pressure from the desire to live with people of a similar age.

Families are under pressure socially. The question is asked: why get married in the first place? Why should people tie themselves up with that sort of thing? Even those who do get married sometimes think about entering into a social contract—they are thinking about divorce even before they get married in the first place. Yesterday we were told that the divorce rate among people in their 50s and 60s is shooting up, which is very sad. Something that has not been touched on—we have tended to concentrate on the junior end of the population—is longevity. There are four generations around my Sunday lunch table. Many people in their 50s and 60s are having to look after older parents at the same time as trying to support their children and grandchildren. Longevity is putting the pressure on family units. Many of them are coping well with it. Do not get me wrong; I fully accept the fact of poverty—it is a reality—but conditions of the sort in which my parents had to bring me up during the post-war years and the pressures of poverty today are totally different. Poverty is different today.

We have to recognise that families are still the greatest agents of care and well-being in the country. They provide the greatest amount of child care, irrespective of all the nurseries and child care facilities. Families provide the greatest amount of support for teenagers, no matter what other advice they receive at school and elsewhere. Families also provide the overwhelming amount of care for the elderly in our society. Therefore, the best policies that the Government could pursue would be to support, reinforce and prioritise policies towards encouraging the family unit as the core of our society.

I was a spokesman on rural affairs when the Government introduced the idea of rural proofing—looking at policies to see how they affected rural areas. It was a laudable objective, although I am not certain that they got around to doing it. I hope that the Government will examine all their policies in the light of "family proofing", and ask, "What does this policy do? However laudable it may be in other terms, will it promote, reinforce and support families, or might an inadvertent consequence be to undermine or reduce the opportunities for families?" I hope that the Government will examine all their policies in that way. They should consider how they might affect family units, because in my view and that of a significant number of people of all political persuasions in our constituencies, the family unit should be supported.

I am delighted to take part in this debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for introducing it and for his leadership of the Christian community in the Palace of Westminster. He does a tremendous job. I shall be extremely brief, because I am desperate to hear from the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed), who speaks about the family with great wisdom and from personal experience. I just want to make a couple of points.

We in this country are in danger of seeing far too many children raised outside the framework of love, support, encouragement and discipline from which many of us benefited and which is essential if one is to grow into a mature and rounded person—although that obviously did not happen in my case. Not everything is about whether a child has one parent or two—I think we have moved on from that debate of a few years ago. It is the quality of parenting that matters, and too many children do not receive quality parenting.

We all know that being a parent is hard. We all try our best, but there are no guarantees regarding the outcomes. I agree with the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed): it is essential that the Government put the family at the centre of their approach to children and society. Parenting is important, and the key point that I want to emphasise in my tiny contribution is that parenting principles can be taught. Many say that that is not true and scream, "Nanny state!" at the very idea of the Government having anything to say or do about encouraging the teaching of parenting principles. However, I believe that the evidence is now overwhelming that certain principles of parenting can be taught, particularly to a generation who have never had positive parenting themselves.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the problems that arise with the kind of people who grow up outwith a stable and secure family background are the most serious issue facing our society today. What are we going to do about that? We all see cases in our surgeries such as the Child Support Agency cases. The thought of what some of those children are going through makes one want to weep. We know that those children will underachieve—that is what the commentators and academics tell us. We know that the evidence suggests that such children will be more inclined to become involved in crime and antisocial behaviour. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

Are we going to say that it is too difficult an area for politicians to involve ourselves in, or are we going to say that this is the most important issue facing our country and we must respond? I call upon the Government not to be weak-kneed. There will be screams of "Nanny state!" from some—perhaps even from some Conservative Members—but I want the Government to know that not every Conservative Member shares that view.

There are excellent charities and voluntary organisations with a great deal of expertise, as my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) pointed out. I want the Government to find gateways, mechanisms and signposts to ensure that those organisations have contact with the people who need them the most. I am so keen to hear from the hon. Member for Loughborough that I will now sit down.

I call Andy Reed to make a cameo appearance.

I am often asked, "Why do you speak so quickly, Mr. Reed?" It is because I always get called at 2.57 pm in Westminster Hall debates. I will try to get through very quickly the specific points that I wish to make.

The hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) hit the nail on the head: it is easy to think that one knows it all as a parent, only to realise as soon as the baby arrives that one knows nothing. It is one of the few areas of life where we have no training and no opportunity to learn. We rely on friends and relatives.

We can talk about relationships and about the family, but if we do not get the work-life balance right, none of it means anything. There can be loving parents with a stable marriage whose children never see them because they work ridiculously long hours. A couple of statistics demonstrate what has happened over the past few years: 65 per cent. of people now work an atypical working week; in other words, those working what we regard as the typical working work—nine-to-five, five days a week—are a minority. Parents and families are bypassing each other in the home. An enormous amount of work needs to be done in that respect.

In 1981, 24 per cent. of mothers returned to work within a year of their child being born. In 2001, 67 per cent. did so. Clearly, there is enormous pressure. The Government are doing an enormous amount and we have benefited from the provision of nursery places for three and four-year-olds, but the period when children are aged between one and three is a difficult time for parents, and we have failed so far to make a real difference.

The Work Foundation says that the work-life balance is about people having a measure of control over when, where and how they work. The vast majority of my constituents working part-time, full-time or atypical hours all over the place do not have that sense of control over their life. While I am pleased to support others of faith about their vision of what the family unit will look like, an enormous amount of work needs to be done in one respect: the work-life balance. All the other things that we discussed today depend on our getting that balance right.

Getting that balance right ensures that we are able to invest in our children at the right time. Statistics have been quoted showing that early years provision can make an enormous difference. If a child starts school at five, their chances of achieving well at GCSE and going to university, and of reducing their exposure to crime and antisocial behaviour, improve. If we get the work- life balance right, we will make an enormous difference in making many of the things that the Minister has heard today into reality, because the family unit will be around to provide time, develop relationships and give a child the best start in life.

I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), especially on his desire to discuss matters of common interest, as we have done for the most part today. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) on his three-minute contribution. Nobody before him had mentioned the work-life balance, and I concur with his point.

Having seen the title of this debate, I started wondering whether the Government should be concerned about parents and families and whether they have any role in determining priorities for parents. Many hon. Members have spoken about the enormous changes in our society. Should we simply accept those changes? It is hard to do that when we hear some of the statistics quoted today. I shall add one more to emphasise the picture drawn for us. ChildLine reports that 1,500 suicidal children phone its helpline every year, often citing problems of abuse, neglect and low self-esteem, which build up during childhood. We must accept that childhood, and therefore parenting, are much more complex now. We need to understand the needs and rights of parents of both sexes and of children, as well as the environment in which we live. I believe that we need to provide support mechanisms and have a positive agenda to promote social cohesion in our communities. Judging by today's debate, it seems that there is a consensus that support is needed from a variety of sources. The decisions on the how, why, what and who of that support are inevitably heavily value-laden.

We have touched on marriage versus unmarried partners versus single parents. Although I am a Christian and believe in marriage, I recognise that there are other forms of relationship that can be successful.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I would like to keep to the time limit.

There is a certain amount of wishful thinking back to the good old days, but we should ask ourselves whether they were so good. Sometimes people stayed in bad relationships. On the other hand, many of us would look back to the strength of the extended family, and to the contribution made by grandmothers in particular.

Recognition of what constitutes legitimate state intervention has changed. We all accept that we should intervene in domestic violence and that there should be strong child protection measures. However, banning physical punishment of children was recently seen by the vast majority of MPs as a step too far. I certainly regard the state as an enabler, for example in helping important parent-child relationships to prosper.

I agree with Labour Members about the importance of reducing child poverty. However, concentrating predominantly on one tool—encouraging lone parents to return to work—concerns me. That has many good consequences, but it has other consequences for the child-parent relationship. Inevitably, some have more choices than others in the first instance. Some people are more able to create opportunities—for example, one parent may be able to work from home. However, choices are severely limited for others, and an important aspect of state intervention or enabling should be to create more choices for all.

Many things can be done, some of which have been outlined. There are many excellent projects, especially in the voluntary sector, which have enormous potential to support families and children, and to prevent things going wrong in the first place, but all too often they are grossly underfunded. There is a large cost to society of broken relationships and of children and young people being damaged in some way by broken or difficult home relationships, and perhaps even being taken into the care system. Looked-after children generally underperform and there is a high possibility of their ending up in a young offenders institution. The Government have done some wonderful things with quality protects and the concept of a corporate parent, but we do not seem to be able to do enough to break through the problems. When a relationship has broken down, it is important that there be good foster carers to try to mend the situation for the children.

So many young people do not conform to the norms of our society, but when we talk about the problems we have to remember that only a minority of young people break the law. Many young people who experience difficult relationships in their early life go on to score tremendous achievements. However, the general point is that the cost of positive intervention is very small in comparison to the cost of breakdowns in the family and local community. Positive intervention might simplistically be compared to having a car regularly serviced and maintained, and responding quickly to any potential mechanical failures.

Nobody enters a relationship hoping that it will end miserably. I agree that there is evidence to show that children thrive best in families in which the parents care for each other and for them. However, that does not mean that there are not other situations in which single parents are successful. We must put greater emphasis on equipping people with opportunities to learn skills that will enable them to handle and manage their relationships as partners, parents and children. Such services need to be provided as mainstream support, rather than as rescue remedies for families labelled as problematic or dysfunctional. I was interested in comments made by two single parents in a recent radio broadcast: both felt that telling them how to bring up their children was extremely patronising. Offering people classes on parenting without being patronising, and getting everybody to participate, is difficult.

Middle-class parents would probably come very happily to parenting classes. About 15 years ago, I was involved in trying to run a course entitled, "It's hard being the parent of a teenager, and even harder being a teenager." Not all groups that we would have liked to come, came. We sought funding for our initiative, and the one stream of funding that we got was for tackling teenage pregnancy; I suppose that that was good. People in our group came from all sorts of backgrounds, and our ideas stemmed from the fact that, traditionally—before everybody took their children to school by car— mums or dads would talk a great deal outside the school gate. We reckoned that school-gate support was rather important. Sure Start offers such support at children's centres. If they have time and are not dashing off to work, mums can stop and talk. Some of the best support is given by one parent to another or by a mentor or somebody in the community. The Church has an important role to play, because it is at the heart of communities. Our traditional communities have broken down and the Church seems to be reaching out and putting something back.

Parenting orders have been a great success. I thought that forcing parents to go to parenting classes would be impossible, but it is not. I should declare an interest: I am a founder member and trustee of Poole community family trust, which receives money from the Government and is of great interest to me. We started with what was perhaps a heavily biased Church background, but we recognise that our task is to strengthen relationships generally. One cannot emphasise enough how important it is that we prepare to enter relationships at adult level and with our children.

Society could do more by ensuring that both parents have an opportunity to participate. From a female perspective, I think that fathers should be far more involved right across the spectrum. They should be involved at the prenatal stage. Some fathers abandon children and do not want to see them, but I think that if they have a good opportunity to form important bonds at an early stage, that might lead to more amicable settlements and we might not end up with the tremendous stress and upset that we have now.

I support Sure Start and think that the Government have done a great deal of good in establishing good child care. I support extended maternity and paternity leave because it can only help. I endorse what so many hon. Members have said: there are important issues and we need to develop a culture of putting children and their interests first. We need to love and care for our children and value their great achievements, and realise that our children are precious beings who should be put above our own selfish interests.

I cannot claim to be a member of the group of Christian MPs, as it was described by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who put the debate together. However, I am the child of a vicarage, so that genesis perhaps gives me a certain qualification to speak.

I commend my hon. Friend for having brought this important topic to debate in Westminster Hall. Indeed, I hope that we will have other opportunities to debate families, their role in society and how government supports or does not support them, on the Floor of the House. It is an important topic in which all Members have an interest, and it is crucial that we talk about it in a way that recognises the issues that families today face. One of my complaints about government is that too often it considers issues in departmental silos and completely fails to address them as they affect the recipients of the policies—families are crucial in that respect.

My appointment as shadow Secretary of State for the family was a recognition on our part of the important role that we believe families play and of the need to put families back at the heart of government. In answer to the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed), it is our way of family proofing what we are doing in Opposition, and how we are considering our policies and their effect on families.

My remit on the family runs widely in terms of the structures that families now find themselves in. We recognise, and I consider policy as it relates to, families of all shapes and sizes. A recognition that a healthy, stable marriage is the best environment for bringing up children does not deny that children will be brought up well in other circumstances. My hon. Friends have quoted many statistics on the family, including on the breakdown of the traditional structure and model. What we need to do is understand the pressures that exist today on families and the relationships that people are forming.

My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) talked about the problem of how so many people are bringing up families without the experience of a stable relationship or family background from which they can have benefited. That is one problem that we need to address. It used to be the case that a core of knowledge was naturally imparted from generation to generation, both overtly and covertly, as children were brought up in a stable relationship and learned from it. What we see today is that, sadly, many people have not had that experience, so they lack that core of knowledge.

We need to break into that cycle and find other ways of imparting the knowledge to young people, so that they, in their turn, can provide the examples that will help future generations. I commend the work done by the community family trusts, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) referred. They do excellent work in several areas of the country, and I am particularly pleased to commend the work done by Woodley Baptist church on that.

The trusts can offer a quality of advice and support that government cannot, and that is an important point. Reference was made in the opening speech to the need for government to give greater recognition to faith groups, and I would widen that to faith and voluntary groups. They can provide a quality of advice, support and service to people over and above that provided by government, however hard those working within government try.

I wonder how the right hon. Lady can justify that statement. Such groups do not have the resources, training or professional qualifications of state and local government. They offer an important service, but surely, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said, that is complementary to other activities.

If the hon. Gentleman thinks that someone requires a knowledge of local and central Government to be able to provide good-quality services to individuals, I entirely disagree. I will give one practical example, although it relates to a different issue. There is a Christian-based drug rehabilitation centre in my constituency and I have talked to the people there. I have visited a number of charitable groups operating such centres and they say it is important that that group cares for people beyond the point where they have been taken off the drugs—which is all the state does. It builds up people's self-esteem, provides them with training and supports them once they are back in the community. That level of support is not provided by the state.

rose—

I will allow the hon. Gentleman one further comeback, provided that he is willing to recognise that faith groups can provide something more than the state provides. Will he do that?

The right hon. Lady makes my point for me. She talks about a complementary, not a replacement, service.

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman listens rather more closely to the debate in future, because that was not what I was talking about. Nevertheless, perhaps I may return to the pressures on families, which have increased immeasurably over the years.

We place immense expectations on children and parents today. Many families find themselves coping with the double whammy of having to care for children and their own parents, because of the current age profile. The pressures on those families are considerable. There is another pressure, too, which is the need for families to live up to a rosy picture of family life that is constantly presented to them. I fear that something else underpins some of the problems that have been identified by my hon. Friends—the idea that if people are not in a relationship where everything goes well, they have to get out if it.

During a television interview last week I was asked, "Can a happy family exist?" I answered yes, they do. I was brought up in a happy family, as are many people, and many people provide happy family backgrounds. However, being a happy family does not mean that there are no disagreements, arguments or that there are not problems. What matters is that people have the ability and skills to cope with problems and overcome them. The expectations that society places on people today create a real problem that we need to address if we are to help and provide them with the support and the ability to enjoy the sort of relationships and families we are talking about.

None the less, I take the point made earlier by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson)—that we need to provide the necessary support for people in abusive and violent relationships. One of the most chilling figures is that the average woman involved in domestic violence suffers from some 35 violent incidents before she leaves and takes action. We need to do much to ensure that we are providing more support for such people.

It is important that government is honest with families, accountable for what it does and does not pretend that it is able to provide them with more support than it can. It is also incumbent on government not to add to the pressures on families in the practical operation of policies. For example, there are problems with the tax credit system. Colleagues and I have had constituents in our advice clinics who have been asked by the Inland Revenue to pay back thousands of pounds that they cannot afford to pay, because of Revenue mistakes. There is also the chaos in the Child Support Agency. Even small things matter, like would-be mothers worrying about where they are going to give birth. For example, the closure of the maternity unit in Wycombe hospital reduces choice for my constituents, and the potential closure of the maternity unit at Fairfield hospital reduces the scope for choice for mothers in the Minister's constituency. Government needs to understand those practical pressures placed on families, and it needs to consider the impact of its policies on families and on the wider family.

I should like to refer to the importance of the wider family, which other hon. Members have not mentioned—not just parents and children, but grandparents, uncles and aunts. Sadly, that wider family is all too often denied in the family justice system, which can not only deny fathers or mothers access to children, but sometimes denies grandparents access to their grandchildren, and which lets families down.

The Government have a responsibility to understand the impact of their policies on families. They have a responsibility to support when support is needed, and help when help is needed, a responsibility not to impose or interfere, but to let families get on with the job of making decisions for themselves and to give them the freedom to do what they believe is in their best interests.

The debate reflects great credit on the House. These are incredibly important issues and, for the main part, they have been discussed with great maturity and reflection. We should have more debates of this nature; I suspect that we would gain more respect from people outside if we did.

I particularly welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). Life began in 1997 for me, but some thought that it had ended then for him. I know that many people in Bury are glad, on a personal level, that it did not all end for him in 1997. That is a personal, and not necessarily political, reflection.

On the hon. Gentleman's comments about faith communities, my experience is that bigotry can work two ways. Many secularists, in my view, are bigoted towards those who say that their opinions and values are shaped and formed by their strong faith beliefs, but I do not think that we should condemn, criticise or devalue that approach. It should be a source of celebration in terms of a Parliament that is truly representative of the nation and its values. Certainly, we must respect the contribution that faith communities can make to this debate and to offering practical support to families in our society.

When the hon. Gentleman said that few marriages were perfect, I was tempted to ring home to get a witness to the contrary, but I do not think that I could do that. He made a number of substantive comments, to which I shall return. He said that stability matters to children and that it is important that we express concern and do not demonstrate condemnation, and he talked about the importance of involving and utilising the expertise of faith groups. I endorse that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) is absolutely right to say that the elimination of child poverty is integral to turning around some of the experiences of children and young people in our society today. He is also right to stress the importance of very early intervention. There is almost consensus on the importance of child care and nursery provision for those earliest months and years in making the difference for many families and communities, and in tackling the whole issue of intergenerational deprivation, which everyone in this House should be passionate about. Early years intervention is very important.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) promoted the concept of the work of community family trusts. I will certainly look into their work, and will speak to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families to see whether there is anything that we could learn from them about mainstreaming, good practice or engaging with such trusts and their work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) talked about the importance of security of personal finance and the quality of public services. Of course, it is true that those things are important; people's standard of living matters significantly and it has links to stability. Families need access to high-quality public services to support stability within the family unit.

The hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) was right to talk about the new pressures on the modern family. We live in a high-pressure, high-stress society, and that has brought new challenges for families. He and other hon. Members were right to point out that, increasingly, parents are not only parenting children but acting as carers for older people. We should not forget that that changes the nature of family relationships. It is true that the extended family is not as strong in many communities and cultures as it was, but there are also many examples of parents caring for an older, dependent relative as well as young children.

In a very thoughtful contribution, the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) highlighted some important issues. He said that good parenting is about striking the right balance between love and discipline. Sometimes when I read the Daily Mail, I am slightly concerned by the emphasis on discipline. Of course, we need to restore discipline to our classrooms and communities and to tackle antisocial behaviour, but many children have never experienced love, affection or positive attention. We must remember that when we make policies in the round.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about the quality of parenting, and he recognised that the state may have a role in offering support to parents who are struggling through extremely difficult decisions. I welcome his support for the state to assist parents in appropriate circumstances—not for the state to circumvent parents' proper responsibility and role—and to intervene when children are at risk of abuse or of not receiving the minimum parenting care that they deserve and need.

My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) rightly raised the issue of the work-life balance. Many of the policies that the Government have been most progressive about and that have had the biggest positive impact are those that recognise that, as society changes, the modern welfare state needs to put at its heart policies that support achieving the right balance between work and home.

The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke) made the important point that we should not give messages that it is right to stay in horrendous relationships—for example, when there has been domestic violence. We must make it clear that some people leave stable relationships because they turn out not to be stable at all and have horrendous consequences for both the adults and the children involved. She was also right to point out the tremendous job that foster carers do in looking after some of our most damaged and disadvantaged children, and to talk about the importance of mainstream, and not only targeted, support.

The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) was right to talk about the need to join up policy—the Children Act 2004, "Every child matters", and the extended school model are vehicles for us to do that. She is also right that the role of the voluntary sector can be very important. I spent my entire working life in the voluntary sector, and I remember the slogan "Voluntary doesn't have to mean amateur." It is important to remember that. We need a balance between the contributions of the state, the voluntary sector and active citizens. She also made important points about domestic violence.

The right hon. Lady, however, also made a couple of political points, which I think spoiled her contribution—but Members would expect me to say that. She talked about being honest with families. Because of the way that the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire presented the debate, I will not read out the long list of policies that the Government have put in place to support families, such as early years education and child care, universal and targeted financial support, maternity pay and leave, paternity leave, extended schools, parenting support, advisers and mentors, welfare to work, and eliminating child poverty. The right hon. Lady has the gall to talk about this Government being honest with families when the previous Government must look back with shame on the way that they allowed the concept of there being no such thing as society to take hold. I know that many Opposition Members have talked about the excesses of Thatcherism.

We should try to achieve a level of consensus on these issues. First, we should state that children benefit from stable relationships. We should promote the benefits of marriage among young people, although we should do nothing that stigmatises adults or young people in different family circumstances. We should recognise that adults have a responsibility to put the interests of their children first—that they have duties, not just rights. We need to rebalance responsibilities and rights in our society. We need to support parents in giving their children the best possible start in life in terms of both quality provision and financial assistance. We need to support people in remaining in stable relationships when things start to get a little tough. In all stable relationships, things can get difficult. It should not be the first—

Order. We must now turn our attention to the next debate.

I should like to start a brief debate on what I consider to be one of the biggest problems facing the schools sector or the education sector as a whole—school closures, particularly in the primary sector. Any inspection of demographic trends will tell any sane person that many primary schools will be emptier places in future, that some closures are inevitable and that those closures will affect large parts of the country. The process of school closure is extraordinarily painful. It causes distress to staff, who often have to wait some time to ascertain whether they have any job security, to parents, who wonder where their children will be schooled next, and to children, who are obviously upset by uncertainty about their future schooling.

The process causes strain between local education authorities, which often have to administer it, and schools, which are affected by it. The process also causes strain between schools, because obviously if a range of schools all suffer from falling rolls, the closure of one can indirectly benefit another. That strain can be coupled with quite strong budgetary pressures. Shrinking schools often put pressure on the entire school finance system and can lead, through things such as the formula shares and the minimum funding guarantee, to one school feeling that it is losing out because another school is being rewarded even though its rolls are falling.

There are solutions to these problems, and this is the second debate that I have initiated along these lines. In the previous one, the Minister said that Ofsted and the Department for Education and Skills were examining how procedures could be implemented a little more painlessly. The Government are a key player in that because, in so far as they can offer various capital grants and new building schemes, they can to some extent ameliorate a process that is otherwise very tough. The modernisation funding, the targeted capital grant and similar funds can sugar the pill. Currently, however, the Government building programme is largely secondary-centred, although our portfolio of primary schools throughout the country is fairly aged. There are many new fine primary schools, but there are a good number of aged schools without adequate play facilities and so on, or without adequate green fields.

I slightly disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), who recently criticised the Government for reneging slightly on their promise to renew every secondary school within a fixed period, because in doing that the Government may deprive themselves of some flexibility when it comes to addressing some of the needs of the primary sector. I suggest that an adequate capital fund for the primary sector is one way in which the school closure process can be a little better accomplished, if it must be accomplished at all.

The Government, to their credit, have published quite precise procedures for school closures. They are detailed, involving consultation, a process of LEA decision and a process whereby the school organisation committees reach a final verdict. If that is not good enough or not unanimous, the matter goes to an adjudicator. So in a sense there is a detailed set of procedures, but within them are quite substantial hidden flaws.

One flaw, which I recently picked up on and which I do not think is dealt with, is that often people making the decision at council level are school governors. If that issue were referred to the national Standards Boards, it would say that in those circumstances school governors need to declare an interest. However, if the bulk of the council are school governors, that can almost disable the whole council, unless they beg for special release. That problem has been encountered in certain places but is not covered in the procedures.

Probably the principal flaw in the procedures is that although they lay out, very ably, a set of factors to be taken into consideration when deciding how a school will be closed—for example, educational quality, distance to be travelled, denominational factors, community support factors and so on—it is not made clear how those factors are to be weighted in the final analysis. It is not clear how an LEA should balance them out or how Ofsted would do so if it were taking the decision. Lurking under the heading "proper procedure" may be both good and bad practice. My key question to the Minister is: is there such a thing as good practice? Can he identify it? If there is such a thing, can he promote it?

The Government cannot entirely step aside, even though the process is set up to release them from taking hard decisions about school closures, as in many ways they are a key player. Historically, the Government were deeply implicated because the capital programme for primary schools was often linked to the removal of surplus places. However, even now, they are a sort of facilitator because they provide a modernisation fund, which can be equally useful on these occasions. They also have an impact via their policy positions. The announcement of the abolition of the surplus places rule and the ability of popular schools to expand could legitimately be taken by some local authorities almost as an encouragement to adopt a laissez-faire policy and leave everything to market forces. The Government could be seen as encouraging local authorities to move in that direction, or not to move at all but simply to stand back and see what unfolds.

The LEAs also have a duty to ensure the efficient use of resources. To some extent that conflicts with the laissez-faire principle. The approach of leaving things to governors is also complicated by the fact that the process by which a school may close itself and simply decide that it is not viable can often be a long drawn-out and painful process, and a responsible local authority may not wish simply to stand by and watch.

I want to use the example of my local authority, Sefton, to reinforce some of my points. Sefton LEA has an excellent record, as shown in the local authority rating for its junior schools. Given the pupils' backgrounds it has done extremely well. It was beaten by very few other local authorities, but largely those from the leafy outer-London suburbs. It has a talented team of officers and rational and thoughtful leadership. The leader of the council, Tony Robertson, is as rational and thoughtful a man as one would wish to meet. He puts up with the circumstances of his job, and somewhat mercurial and, at times, irascible MPs.

Nevertheless, the council had a difficult job; it had a number of dilemmas and historically it had followed the usual path, which is politically fairly unproblematic, of taking out surplus places, encouraging consensual mergers often linked to refurbishment, and closing the odd school that everyone agreed should be closed because it was severely short of pupils. However, rolls fell rapidly throughout the 1990s and promised to fall even further throughout the next decade. During that time some schools increased capacity but there was a consensus among head teachers and elected members that something needed to be done.

Uncannily, it was in June, after the local elections, that they actually decided what had to be done. Closures were promoted rather than simply the removal of capacity, because the latter was regarded as a cosmetic manoeuvre, a term used in many of the Sefton documents. In essence, a cosmetic manoeuvre might take out surplus capacity or remove a block of a school but it would not fundamentally alter the on-costs that small schools incur, which have implications for all schools in general.

However, an essential step was missed out, and I would not applaud this as good practice. The authority moved from agreeing that there should be closures to the position of suggesting which schools should be closed. I would say that there was a missing stage, which is present in other local authorities, of agreeing how schools will be selected for closure once such a programme is in mind. That led to what I think was poor practice, when a rather heterogeneous list of schools for closure was put into the public domain.

Some schools on the list were certainly half-empty and heavily subsidised. There were three distinct subsidies in the Sefton system: a subsidy against a sudden reduction in pupils over a year; one for small schools; and one for ghost pupils. All of that is permitted in guidelines suggested by the Department for Education and Skills. However, although some schools on the list were heavily subsidised with a considerable number of surplus places, others were relatively or partly empty but not subsidised to any appreciable extent. More bizarrely still, others on the list were entirely full and had no surplus places. Additionally, there was the complication that many problematic schools that appeared non-viable were omitted from the list.

Sefton was pressed for the guiding rule in the process, and it was this: the authority had to close what it could. If a school's pupils could fit in another denominational or community school somewhere else, it might become a candidate for closure, whether or not it was heavily subsidised, or full or empty. That is a morally objectionable approach because it entails a good number of prejudices. One is that it is necessarily prejudiced against small schools—I have made that point in a previous debate—because small schools can be fitted into large schools but not vice versa. Secondly, there is a prejudice against schools that exist in the middle of a conurbation, because their pupils can be reallocated more easily than pupils at a school on the edge, regardless of subsidy or the number of surplus places.

There was also a prejudice against quality in so far as the process was not sufficiently weighted for it. One school in my constituency that was scheduled for closure—Kings Meadow, under the able leadership of inspired head teacher Alison Watson—has recently received two accolades. It came top in The Times list for performance at level 4, and the Basic Skills Agency awarded it a quality mark. A small infant school, St. Theresa's, is completely full and in the top 5 per cent. in its category, again led by an able headmistress, Anna Gavin. Another, Shoreside school, performed just below Kings Meadow in the same table in The Times. When I raised the issue of those schools in a previous debate, the Minister for School Standards agreed that the presumption was that full and successful schools that received praise from Ofsted should not be closed. None the less, schools like that are on the Sefton list.

The Sefton list took no real account of parental preference, although perhaps that is inevitable, as no parent likes to see their child's school closed. It also took no real account of investment and buildings, which creates problems. When local authorities start to close schools, most of them suddenly find that the buildings are not adequate for whatever schemes they had in mind. The list also took no real account of future Government initiatives, in particular the possibility of children's centres and the effect that they may have on the local authority and primary provision as a whole.

The local authority position was essentially that a school could be closed if it duplicated provision. I suggested the contrary—that schools should not be closed other than in a consensual way, unless they were not viable. That is a narrower and fairer criterion, and one which Ofsted itself would wish to see used. However, it is possible even for a local authority to try to alter funding regimes to get rid of the schools that it does not want, and the DFES needs to be mindful of that. None the less, there is a general need to have an appreciable degree of fairness and transparency in the process.

The consultation process was not easy. It was relatively infertile and it did not lead to a change of many minds, at least at officer level in Sefton. However, through a chapter of accidents, the LEA has recently closed the seven least viable schools. I say "through a chapter of accidents" because I do not believe that that precise effect was by the political design of anyone on the council. It happened as a result of negotiations between the political parties. The entire process was agony for the staff, who needed support throughout. They faced six months of not knowing whether they would have jobs in the future or where the jobs would be. It was agony for the parents and it was distressing for the schools. I pay tribute to all in the borough who fought for their schools, whether or not they did so successfully. They engaged in what was an important fight for them and for the community.

The net effect is that such action damaged the relationship between the LEA and the schools and, to a lesser extent, probably that between the schools. There is almost a sense of relief when school closures are mooted that it is not one's particular school that is chosen. Some of the schools that were chosen certainly thought that they were unfairly chosen. Members were also bruised by the experience and probably felt a little marginalised. I do not know whether the protocol or performance was appropriate, but they were not allowed to speak until the end of the proceedings.

I shall return to my theme. There is good and bad practice in school closures. It will be a learning curve for many local authorities throughout the country. This is a big issue. Ministers cannot stand idly by, leave everything to the system and pretend that they are not part of it. One observation is that the less primary schools see themselves as clusters and a primary network, a seamless service that is linked to delivery across the area, the more problematic the issue will be. To manage the process effortlessly, we must acknowledge that there is a conflict with what we are trying to achieve and the high degree of institutional autonomy that is being given to schools at the moment. I would not suggest that we should simply leave it to the market, but if we go down the road of marketisation we will change for ever the culture of primary schools, without reducing appreciably the pain of parents, teachers and schools. If there is good practice in such action, can it be identified? Should it be spread? Can the Government stand aloof, and do their current policies help? Are the Government aware of the scale of the current problem and the scale of the problem to come? Do they have a workable solution that will cause less grief all round?

I shall endeavour to respond to the speech of the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), but if I cannot cover all his points in 10 minutes, I shall write to him. I congratulate him on securing this important debate, in which he has had the opportunity to raise issues that are of national significance and to illustrate them with an example from his constituency, thereby raising again in the House the review that has taken place in Sefton.

I concur with what the hon. Gentleman said at the beginning of his speech about the falling primary rolls in most parts of the country. There is an enormous challenge, which can give rise, as he said, to serious stresses and strains within and between schools and in communities, which affect staff, parents and children. I accept, in a sense, his central point that the Government have a role to play in getting the framework right in order to minimise unnecessary stresses and strains.

At the beginning of his speech, the hon. Gentleman raised an issue about the financial strains. We have sought to strike the right balance to provide a minimum guarantee in the system that can at least give some protection to schools that are suffering falling rolls. I sense that the vast majority of schools and of people involved in education accept that as a sensible reform, even though he is right to say that had we not instituted it, some schools that are not suffering falling rolls would have got a little more money. Generally speaking, in my experience of visiting local communities, schools and local education authorities, there is an acceptance that it makes sense to have at least that minimum protection in the system for those that have falling rolls.

As the hon. Gentleman said, he was involved in an earlier debate in which my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards set out the responsibility of LEAs to manage the supply of school places in an area and to ensure that local schools meet the needs of local people and provide high-quality education in a cost-effective way.

The Minister has touched on the problem of the minimum funding guarantee. There is no objection to it per se, provided that it is not superimposed on other local authority guarantees that do exactly the same thing. I think that there is currently some flexibility at the Department for Education and Skills on the subject. Am I correct?

The hon. Gentleman is correct. It is important that we maintain the flexibility so that there is a basic protection for schools, particularly those that are facing quite significant falls in their rolls.

I will not rehearse all the facts and figures about Sefton, because the hon. Gentleman knows them and the House has had the opportunity to consider them before. However, the total number of surplus places is considerable and there would be no disagreement about the need for a process to examine how that high level of surplus capacity is best dealt with for Sefton. In a sense, that is the process that has been going on and to which he referred. Clearly, he is much closer to the detail of that than I am, and I must take on trust what he has said today. However, I would like to make some observations.

In the previous debate that the hon. Gentleman secured, my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards mentioned that we are working with the Audit Commission on a project that we hope will help LEAs and schools to tackle falling primary rolls and to deliver the primary national strategy. We are drawing together a portfolio of best practice and developing a toolkit of practical approaches. They will be available on the DFES website from February next year. The toolkit will explore all the different options that are available—collaboration, sharing of best practice, federations and extended schools, as well as school closures and amalgamation.

In his peroration, the hon. Gentleman rightly challenged me about the role that we will play, particularly in respect of identifying and spreading best practice. We are doing that, and the information that I referred to will be available in February. It will be an important addition to the tools that are available for all who are engaged in these debates in our communities, be it at school level, wider community level or LEA level.

I will not rehearse again the procedures that are followed. We believe that they are sensible and make sense. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, a number of factors—which we set out—need to be taken into account when the debates are happening at local level. Most obviously, and perhaps most importantly, consideration must be given to the potential impact on educational standards in the area as a whole, as well as to the availability of alternative provision, travel implications, cost-effectiveness, the diversity of provision, issues around denominational education to which he referred, the impact on the community and the views of local parents and schools.

The hon. Gentleman set out the challenge clearly: to give some kind of framework, which is what the categories seek to do, while providing a degree of local flexibility. I accept that in any system that relies on local flexibility there will be inconsistencies in the practice that occurs in different parts of the country. I am happy to take away the specific points that the hon. Gentleman raised in the light of his experience in Sefton, so that we can consider whether the guidance that we provide to authorities and school organisation committees is the best.

The Minister mentioned extended schools and children's centres. It is difficult for a local authority to rationalise its provision if it does not know quite what will happen with extended schools, children's centres and all the other positive initiatives of that nature that the Government have in mind. Does the Minister concede that it would help the process if it was clearer to the local authorities at an earlier date what the Government expected of them? I am anxious that school buildings might be abandoned, mothballed or sold off when they might subsequently be required for other purposes, such as children's centres.

The hon. Gentleman raises a perfectly legitimate point. We are in a period of considerable change. The demographic situation leads to falling rolls, but at the same time the various Government programmes such as children's centres and extended schools provide opportunities that have not previously been available to communities and schools. The hon. Gentleman therefore makes a reasonable challenge in saying to me that we need to put those programmes in place sufficiently speedily so that those options are realistically available to communities, including his own. He does not need me to remind him of some of the benefits that can come from programmes such as the extended schools programme and the facilities that they can make available.

In his closing remarks, the hon. Gentleman mentioned tensions between an approach to primary education based on autonomy and school independence, and an approach based on networks and clusters. I agree with him that the more networked schools are, the less they will face challenges. That is why in "Excellence and enjoyment: a strategy for primary schools", which we published last year on the primary national strategy, we placed much emphasis on the opportunities for schools to work together in a range of different ways, including the primary leadership programme. We also emphasised the impact that the national college for school leadership is having in giving support to primary schools.

I do not accept that there is a contradiction between saying that a school should take more control of its day-to-day affairs, have a greater sense of its own identity as an institution and make choices about its curriculum in order to personalise learning, and saying that it should also be part of networks. In fact, I believe that that combination makes particular sense for primary schools, and that approach lies at the heart of the primary national strategy. The existence of that strategy, through "Excellence and enjoyment: a strategy for primary schools" combined with the emerging resources for children's centres and extended schools, means that areas with falling rolls have some opportunities that they did not have in the past.

None the less, there will still be cases in which closing schools will be the most appropriate course of action for a local education authority to take. I return to the hon. Gentleman's main challenge to us. Clearly, as a Government, although we no longer get involved in the specifics of such decisions—it is right that we do not—we must get the framework right. Broadly speaking, I believe that we have done so, but I am happy to take on board the points that the hon. Gentleman has made in the debate today, and particularly the specific example of the handling of those matters in Sefton, to see whether lessons can be learned for our national guidance and national policy. I will write to the hon. Gentleman setting that out. I congratulate him again on securing this important debate.

I am grateful for the opportunity to tell my hon. Friend the Minister about a remarkable visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo that I made with my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) on behalf of the all-party group on the great lakes region and genocide prevention. I shall focus on just one aspect of that visit and, with your agreement, Mr. Deputy Speaker, my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow would like to speak on some of the broader political issues.

Our visit was remarkable because we were probably the first Members to venture 1,000 miles up the Congo river to such remote villages. It was not the usual parliamentary visit. Our journey to a pygmy village involved travelling 10 hours in an open dug-out canoe, a cycle ride through the jungle and a final stage on foot. Our accommodation was similarly adventurous and unorthodox, and freshly caught Congo river catfish was our main source of nourishment. There were times when I wondered whether we would return, such as when on our return voyage a tropical deluge forced us to take shelter in a side channel while we furiously bailed water from our canoe. Nevertheless, I would not have missed that visit for anything.

I am grateful to Mark Pallis of the all-party group for his organisational work, the Rainforest Foundation and Greenpeace for sponsoring that part of the visit and also for the hospitality and support that we received from Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Kinshasa, Mr. Andy Sparkes. It was a pioneering journey with a serious purpose: to investigate logging in the equatorial rain forest of the DRC. We all know that chopping down rain forests poses an environmental problem for the world—and the DRC contains the world's second largest rain forest—but the questions I always asked were, "What about the poor and needy people who live in remote rain forest areas? Don't they need to make a living?"

At $90 a year, the average per capita income in the DRC is the lowest in the world, and the income in the forested areas is even lower than that. The reason for examining these matters now is that international agencies, including the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, are planning to support expanded logging of the DRC's rainforests with a sixtyfold increase on present levels, in an attempt to assist the transitional Government with rebuilding the country's economy, which has been ravaged by years of internal armed conflict, brutality and genocide. This involves a new forest code modelled on what the World Bank developed in Cameroon. All the evidence that I have seen shows that it has not worked in Cameroon, and I do not think that it will work in the DRC.

We visited villages where logging had taken place to find out for ourselves. Wherever we went we heard the same story from the people who lived there. The people who live in the forests have derived no benefits at all from the logging. The schools and medical centres promised under agreements with the logging companies have not materialised. Whatever taxes the companies have paid to central Government for the concessions, nothing has trickled down to the remote villages. The roads were built to gain access to the most valuable groves of the most valuable trees, not for the benefit of the local people.

I walked along the first 5 km of one new road that is being cut 24 km through the forest to reach selected trees. The logging company manager told me he had chosen the route to avoid a nearby village, so that he did not have the hassle of taking his vehicles past the local people. The roads are only the usual dirt tracks.

I saw housing being built by the logging company in an encampment outside a village. It was the same standard as that in which the locals already lived and seemed to await imported labour. Logging does not seem to provide that many jobs for local people. Most often, itinerant experienced labour seems to be recruited. The communities told us loud and clear that their experience of logging was bad and that they did not want it.

Our party also visited a pygmy village where logging was due to take place soon. The inhabitants had not even been informed that what they regard as their forest had been selected, let alone been consulted. They are deemed to have no rights, but we know that chopping down the trees destroys their local environment and the resources on which they depend for their very subsistence.

The World Bank proposal is supposed to address these problems through the forest code. A number of existing logging contracts are supposed to be cancelled and 6 million hectares of logging concessions revoked. The World Bank has urged that the taxes paid for new concessions should be increased substantially, and that 40 per cent. of the revenues should be passed to local communities. I cannot see that working; it has not worked in the Cameroon, and there is even less chance of it working in the DRC—in fact, I believe that there is no chance of that at all. When one is up a forest track several miles from a remote village that is itself 1,000 miles up the river, one realises that in such a place there is no way of enforcing any of this code.

On top of that, there is no system of what we would call governance in most of the DRC, and there never has been. There has only ever been a crude, and often brutal, regime of extraction and exploitation. That was the case under King Leopold, the Belgian colonists, Mobutu and during the subsequent years of internal war. There is no culture of governance in the DRC, only one of plunder and corruption. Despite express policies and commitments, there has been no consultation with civil society or the forest communities about the new forest code; we found that few people even knew of its existence. The contracts do not seem to have been cancelled, nor the concessions revoked.

Against that background, logging is the worst sort of activity for the World Bank to support. It is purely extractive; trees are chopped down and shipped away, and no value-added industries are involved. Unlike oil and gas extraction, logging does not involve any real investment, and is short-term. The World Bank's approach seems to be based on the assumption that the expansion of logging will bring economic benefits to the DRC's poor people. However, as we found, it will not. Worse, in destroying the forest, logging will destroy the wealth that it generates for the people who inhabit it— wild game, fruits, oils, natural medicines and, especially, caterpillars. About $100 a year in revenue can come from the caterpillar yields of a tree.

What should institutions such as the World Bank do for the DRC? The country's economy needs a kick-start and lots of support; it is not enough just to say no to logging. The answer lies in a staggering fact: we travelled on the giant Congo river in two large dug-out canoes fastened together and powered by two outboard engines. In 10 hours of travel over two days, we saw no other motorised craft—not one. We saw only individuals perched at the rear of their small dug-out canoes, who are like gondoliers, slowly propelling their craft along the river banks.

The DRC is a huge country. The Congo and its tributaries make up a huge waterway network, which is almost unused other than for the most local or primitive transportation. It could be like a giant motorway system if there were suitable commercial boats. How can a country possibly move forward without a transport system? People throughout the world are resourceful and imaginative, but if they do not have the means to trade any produce except in the most local markets they cannot progress and climb out of poverty. Whatever transport the DRC had was destroyed by war.

In my view, the best thing that the World Bank or other international institutions could do for the DRC would be to help to provide some suitable vessels so that the people of the Congo could travel and trade on one of the great rivers of the world, which gives their country its name. To witness a river of that scale with no motorised vessels at all was almost eerie, and a testament to how poor and devastated the country is.

My plea to my hon. Friend the Minister is that he should study the all-party report and, in conjunction with the Department for International Development, which is doing some fabulously brilliant work in the DRC, urge the World Bank and the DRC Government to think again about the new logging initiative; that this country should offer its considerable expertise to help to reconstruct some transport infrastructure in the DRC; and that he should collaborate with the Department of Trade and Industry and UK Trade and Investment to fund a permanent UK representative in Kinshasa to try to encourage direct investment from this country in the DRC. There are major opportunities for British businesses there, and the DRC desperately needs private sector capital and investment.

We ended our visit back in Kinshasa, where we met Olivier Kamitatu, the Speaker of the DRC Parliament, an impressive individual by any standards. He is trying to get a conference on investment off the ground in order to arrange and support a sound investment regime and ensure that the people of his country have the best chance of benefiting from its considerable resources. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to support such an initiative, to take a lead on the matter and to listen to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow has to say about the visit.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) and congratulate him on securing the debate, and on giving such an eloquent account of what sometimes appeared to be a journey into the heart of darkness. It was a truly astonishing visit. I, too, would like to put on the record my thanks to the policy co-ordinator of the all-party group, Mark Pallis, and to the group's associate researchers, who have been invaluable.

I would like to ask the Minister about three issues in particular: the recent political events in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the prospects for elections and the accountability of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—MONUC. As the Minister will be aware, Rwanda has just this week threatened to send troops into the DRC. The Rwandan Hutu militia has been based in the DRC for the past 10 years. It was the genocidaire responsible for the genocide in Rwanda and for grave human rights abuses against Congolese civilians in the area. Although it is clear that the militia has, in the past, constituted a threat to Rwanda, the level of that threat at present is unclear and remains disputed.

There are two opposing views, the Rwandan and the Congolese. I have many Congolese and many Rwandan friends, so let me try to state both positions. From the Rwandan perspective, the Government argue that the Hutu militia has had a decade to rearm and reorganise—often helped by the international community, as it certainly was immediately after the 1994 genocide—and that it continues to pose a real and significant threat to Rwandan national security.

The Rwandan Government maintain that they have consistently called on the international community to disarm and demobilise those forces, and indeed the Rwandan Government are correct in their claim: the international community has failed them. Villages on the Rwandan side of the border have been attacked, and those responsible for the 1994 genocide are intent on completing their unfinished business. If the Congolese Government cannot sort out the forces, the Rwandans feel that they will have to do it themselves. The all-party group's considered opinion was that, in 1998, the threats that the Rwandans received certainly legitimised their initial involvement in the DRC. However, we published a report showing that we felt that there had been a movement towards mineral exploitation and away from national security interests.

What plans do our Government have to try to resolve the issue of the ex-Forces Armées Rwandaises and Interahamwe rebels? Have our Government given support to the option of a neutral third force, such as the African Union, forcibly disarming the ex-FAR? When I was in the DRC, there was discussion of two integrated brigades being trained to combat the ex-FAR. What is the current position on that option?

From the Congolese perspective, it is argued that Rwanda's motives are political and economic and not security-based. From the Congo's point of view, the Interahamwe provides Rwanda with the excuse to keep the border unstable and maintain a flow of minerals and resources to buoy the Rwandan economy and pay for a large part of its army. Congo claims that Rwanda undermines the search for peace in the region because economically it is in Rwanda's interest to maintain a presence in the DRC.

Rwanda's threats to invade Congo, although on one level understandable, are none the less extremely worrying. If realised, those threats would violate international law, breach the UK-Rwandan memorandum of understanding and threaten the stability of the whole region. Rwandan military action might also push the Congolese into an alliance with the Forces Democratique pour la Liberation du Rwanda, which would lead to an upsurge in fighting. What steps have the British Government taken to communicate their concerns to Rwanda? Will the Government ensure that the Security Council response adequately reflects the gravity and severity of the situation? Will the Minister state whether Rwanda's threat to enter the DRC breaches the memorandum of understanding between the UK and Rwanda? If it does, will that entail a review of our bilateral aid agreement, or what other consequences might there be, if any?

The deadline for elections is near. Today, we launch our new all-party group report entitled "To Elections and Beyond". I hope that the Minister will find time to read it—I have a copy right here to pass to him. In the report we set out the priorities to help hold elections on time: the demobilisation and integration of the army, the DRC to be in control of its territory, and an early decision on the electoral system.

I have four questions—[Interruption.] Come now, Minister, there are only four. First, has the $100 million promised to the Congo in the national disaster response plan trust fund been disbursed? The funds were to pay for the centres d'orientation, which are vital to the demobilisation process. I know that donors were waiting for the DRC to put certain mechanisms in place, but I understand that that has now happened. Secondly, what was the result of Vice-President Ruberwa's visit? The all-party group also met the vice-president. As a result of his visit, will the British Government provide additional support to the DRC army or police?

Thirdly, the all-party group has been in touch with the constitutional commission of the senate in the DRC, which has had the monumental task of drafting a new constitution. I have been impressed with the cross-party spirit and commitment of the commission, and I congratulate it on its work so far. Can the UK assist with the technical aspects of drafting that important document, even though it is already in its final stages?

Fourthly, I hope that the Minister saw the all-party group report on arms flows in the eastern DRC. Again, I have a copy for him—he may have trouble sleeping at night, and I am sure that he will welcome this additional material to peruse. A copy was made available to the UN expert group of the Security Council on arms in September. I am delighted that MONUC is now being trained in arms monitoring as we recommended in the report. Our research found that to make embargoes work, consistent political support is one of the most important factors. I congratulate the Government on the assistance that we have given the UN expert group so far, but I hope that it will continue. What steps are we taking to ensure that other states in the Security Council are similarly supportive?

I finish by touching on the accountability of MONUC. It is doing a fantastic job in difficult circumstances, but there have been instances of sexual abuse and exploitation, and allegations of corruption. We need to ask who guards the guardians. I raised the matter when I met Bill Swing last month. I know that the immunity of the UN has been a long-standing principle. I understand the legal quagmire that can arise when trying to apply a single set of legal standards to troops, but action is urgently needed. Will the Minister let me know what will be done?

I welcome the interaction between the all-party group and parliamentarians from both Rwanda and the DRC. I trust that together we will be able to ensure that the great lakes region has a more stable future.

I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) and for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) for their constructive and thoughtful contributions. I visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but I was more cosseted than they and did not get that deeply into the rain forest. It was good to hear about their experiences. In my experience, there is nothing like getting out of the central area of the capital city in order to see the stark realities of life on the ground, and I always try to do that when I travel.

The conflict in the great lakes region is often called Africa's forgotten war. I am glad that we have a chance to show that that is not the case, and I am grateful for this opportunity to highlight the work of the United Kingdom and the rest of the international community in trying to bring about lasting peace.

If my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney will forgive me, I will deal with logging later, and I will now address some of the wider issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow. The political situation in the eastern DRC and on the border with Rwanda is extremely complex. My hon. Friend set out the competing sets of arguments. If there were a simple solution, it would have been carried out some time ago. However, there is not a simple situation. We are deeply concerned about recent tension between Rwanda and the DRC. In response to recent threats of a Rwandan incursion, the international community has spoken with one voice, making it clear that any incursion by one sovereign state into another would not be tolerated.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development spoke to President Kagame and emphasised that although the UK understands Rwandan concerns over the continued presence of the ex-FAR and Interahamwe, a unilateral military solution is not the answer and would just make a bad situation worse. However, we must recognise that the Rwandans have a legitimate grievance that has to be addressed. It is intolerable that 10,000 former killers are based just across the border from Rwanda, making raids and carrying out massacres in the territories of Rwanda and Burundi. If that was happening here, we would think that we had a legitimate interest in getting it sorted out. That is also true for the Rwandans.

We are pressing the United Nations and the DRC Government, reminding them of the need to make early progress on disarming and repatriating foreign armed troops in the DRC. We have made it clear to both sides that they must desist from rhetoric that serves only to inflame what is already a very sensitive situation.

The memorandum of understanding with Rwanda comes up for review shortly, and we will bear in mind the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow. However, I say again that the Rwandans too have a legitimate interest in resolving this problem.

We believe that the Congolese Government could do much more to resolve the issue of the ex-FAR and Interahamwe. In particular, they need to make progress on integrating their army and making it accountable, effective and professional. They will then be better placed to deal with this situation. The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo should continue to support the Congolese in that task. At the same time, Rwanda must continue to reassure would-be returnees that the door is still open for them to come back in safety and without fear of persecution, and to be rehabilitated.

My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney described the situation in the interior with regard to logging. I share many of his concerns. Timber is one of the DRC's many natural resources; it is one of that country's tragedies that it is potentially one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In the visit of the all-party group it was clear that that resource must not simply be looted; it should be managed with great care to ensure that it is sustainable and that the proceeds are used for the benefit of all the Congolese people, not least those who dwell in the rain forest. My hon. Friend is right to be sceptical about the implementation of the undoubtedly good intentions of those who are seeking to regulate the forestry industry.

We have supported the World Bank's programmes to increase transparency and to curb illegal logging. We have also reminded the transitional Government of the need to meet the provisions of the World Bank's forest code by ensuring the rights of local communities and ensuring that commercial logging contributes to national development. Through the Department for International Development the UK is looking at ways in which it can best support the transitional Government to develop a well-regulated forestry sector. I shall draw my hon. Friend's speech to the attention of those in the World Bank and elsewhere who are thinking about these matters and working on them. He made some important points.

We have began to see indications that some UK businesses are interested in investing in the DRC, but despite the country's massive mineral and other wealth there are still many hurdles that need to be overcome before investment is viable for many companies; not least of those is the endemic corruption. I am sorry to say that the DRC is ranked 133rd out of 146 in Transparency International's recent corruption perceptions index. The UK has provided funds for the DRC's commission on ethics and anti-corruption. We welcome the recent decision of the transitional Government to suspend six Ministers and 12 Government officials for corruption. Further strong action by the Congolese authorities to tackle corruption will be necessary if this problem is to be dealt with satisfactorily.

My hon. Friend raised the question of infrastructure. He rightly said that roads of any standard outside Kinshasa are rare; that makes meaningful economic development difficult. He is right to draw attention to the great potential resource that the Congo river forms. I share his view that it could play an important part in reviving the Congolese economy, but that would require a benign and secure environment which does not yet exist. Our focus for the time being is on creating those conditions.

In the meantime the UK has committed itself to helping with some smaller projects. I am pleased to say that DFID is contributing over the next two years about £30 million to the recently developed programme for transition and recovery. It is also providing about £4 million to the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Office for Project Services to rehabilitate the road-river link between Kisangani and Ubundu in the north-east. Through Belgian technical co-operation £4 million is being provided for the rehabilitation of roads and £2 million for the rehabilitation of community infrastructure such as schools, water supplies, health centres and markets in the Kasai area.

I am conscious that I do not have time to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow about MONUC. I will write to her about that. She is right to raise the issue of sexual exploitation by soldiers and civilian personnel associated with MONUC. We are committed to helping the Congo move towards free and fair elections within the time scale laid down. We recognise that restoring peace and stability to the DRC is a precondition for restoring stability across the entire region.

The DRC is a rich country. There is no good reason why its people should live in fear and penury. The creation of a transitional Government was only the first step. The next is to achieve security and the rule of law. The third step is to organise free and fair elections with a view to providing a Government who are respected locally and internationally. Only then will it be possible to develop the huge resources of the Congo for the benefit of all its people.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.